


catch your breath on sand

by lymricks



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy is stuck in a bunker but steve visits sometimes, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post S3, mysterious maybe evil scientists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28362426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: Steve doesn’t realize it until July, until after everything has happened, but he’s known Billy Hargrove for years. He’s not sure how he figures it out. It’s sometime after stripping out of his destroyed Scoops uniform, but before scrubbing the blood off his face, before he digs into those bruises just hard enough to hurt. It’s not shocking or startling. It doesn’t knock him off his feet.&The red light turns green and Steve pulls through it. He’s looking straight ahead, out into the snow and the cold night air when he says, “He doesn’t remember.”He hears more than sees El shrug again. “No,” she says finally. “But he will.”-Steve remembers something important, but just barely. He has questions. In December, he gets to ask them. Billy--in the same concrete room the doctors have had him in since July--has questions too.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 166
Kudos: 292





	1. July, October, November

**Author's Note:**

> I read _one day in december_ and then some sad poetry and I tripped and fell and this happened. Title from [ a note ](https://lymricks.tumblr.com/post/638597110132047873/a-note) by Wislawa Szymborksa.

_July 4th or 5th or...the details are a bit fuzzy, all right?_

Steve doesn’t realize it until July, until after everything has happened, but he’s known Billy Hargrove for years. He’s not sure how he figures it out. It’s sometime after stripping out of his destroyed Scoops uniform, but before scrubbing the blood off his face, before he digs into those bruises just hard enough to hurt. It’s not shocking or startling. It doesn’t knock him off his feet. It just gives him pause, for a moment, his foot pausing midstep, his head tilting to the side. On a different day, his hair would fall in his face and Nancy would call him some sort of cute animal, but his hair is sweat-crusted and greasy all at once, so it doesn’t move at all. Really, it’s only his foot, frozen midstep, and his lips pursing that might clue any onlookers in to the fact that he’s remembered something.

Of course, there aren’t any onlookers. Steve finds himself where he did last November and the time before that, too: alone in an empty house, grieving the loss of someone he didn’t really know and grappling with his role in their death. His parents aren’t home. The house is silent. He could put on Christmas music, but it’s July, and that hasn't helped the last two times, either.

The second thing, the more painful thing, the thing he’s just remembering _right now_ as he lowers his foot to the floor and swallows hard, is that he’d known Billy Hargrove before he’d shown up to Hawkins.

There’s not a whole fucking lot that Steve’s sure of anymore, not with the monsters and the death and the magic powers and the grief and the heaviness of trying to be normal, but he’s sure of _this thing_. He’s sure that, for three Decembers in a row, he’d known Billy Hargrove on the shores of a beach in California. What he’s not sure of is how he could have _forgotten_.

Steve takes another step forward. He balls up the Scoops uniform and puts it in the trash. When he’d taken the job, there’d been this rule--you had to return the uniform if you quit and you had to get it cleaned in a special way. He stares at it in the trash can, his head tipped to one side, but of course there won’t be anymore Scoops in Hawkins. Maybe corporate will come after him, or something, send letters to his house, but there’s nowhere to bring the uniform back. The mall is gone.

Billy is gone.

Steve closes his eyes. That realization hits him harder than the remembering had. He tries to recall the details that will crystallize those moments in his mind, but he can’t, not really. There’s just vague impressions: the smell of salt on the air, a scraped knee--he’d tripped in the sand, and it had stung, a laughing voice and a warm hand pulling him to his feet, bright blue eyes. He remembers the eyes the best. They transform, now. Steve can see them, those same blue eyes, in the Byers’s house that night, at the Halloween party, staring down at him during basketball practice, behind the wheel of the car that Steve was just about to ram.

Had Billy been trying to tell him? Had Billy remembered? When he leaned over him in basketball practice that day after shoving him to the ground, maybe he’d wanted Steve to know that it was just like that other time, that first time on the beach in California, when Steve had fallen down and Billy had helped him up.

Steve steps into the shower and the water soaks him in seconds. He stares down at the floor and it swirls and spirals and swirls, red and black at first, then red, then just a little bit of pink. Some of his blood, some of Billy’s, then no blood at all.

He’d tried to get the kids organized around the body, when the people first came. He’s not sure how Billy’s blood got on him, maybe Max? Maybe El? He’d hugged both girls, he’s sure of it, and Max had cried so hard he thought she might pass out, but he doesn’t remember touching Billy. At least, not tonight.

Fuck.

Steve leans his forehead against the tile and he’s angry, in that moment, absolutely fucking riotous that he’s remembering now, that he has all these questions, that the only person who could have answered any of them is gone, long gone, died saving the fucking world while Steve watched him do it. 

They should have told Billy about the monsters and maybe he would have been safe, but maybe he wouldn’t have, and maybe they should tell everyone about the monsters, but then maybe everyone would feel like Steve does all the goddamn time, like something is right around the corner, like it’s just waiting to jump out at him.

After the shower, after he dries off and drinks a bottle of expensive red wine in deep, desperate gulps, after he’s curled up in a lounger by the pool and stared at it for a while, after all of that, finally, he sleeps, and Steve dreams about a beach in California, three years in a row, dreams of being a kid who was pissed about the loss of snow and excited about the beach, and excited about the other thing, the next part, the voice by the ice cream stand--

Steve had known him only as Billy, a kid on the beach who’d helped Steve up and been happy to see him when he came back.

_“Steve! You’re back again! I want to show you this new thing--”_

Billy’s voice, when they were eight years old, and nine years old, and ten years old, and when Steve turned eleven his parents took them all to the mountains instead, and he was a kid, he was a kid and he forgot about his Christmas friend by the beach with the blue eyes and the surfboard who made it a little bit better that there wasn’t any snow.

He’d forgotten that he’d known Billy Hargrove and now--well. There isn’t a Billy Hargrove to know, anymore.

And anyway, he thinks, when he wakes up hours later, unsure of the date or how long he’s slept, that kid with the blue eyes had been happy. He couldn’t have been expected to recognize him in the Billy Hargrove that appeared in Hawkins, Indiana.

But maybe he should have known him anyway.

Had Billy known him?

~

October 30th:

Steve is eating ice cream out by the Hawkins public pool. It’s closed. It’s been closed since “the accident,” which is what everyone calls the night that El through Billy Hargrove through the fucking wall. They don’t know that’s what happened, obviously. It’s a minor blip in the strange events of that week, a freak thing, the wall collapsed, partially, people say, and anyway, who cares about the public pool when so many people died. Maybe they’d care if they knew it was connected.

Steve’s been coming here on and off since July. Since he remembered. It’s the last place he can be sure he saw Billy when he was really just Billy, flirting with the moms and yelling at the kids when they ran too fast. In a lot of ways, it feels a little bit like a shrine, or a tribute, or maybe a mausoleum, although no one is entombed here. Dustin had told him in passing that Billy had cried in the sauna that night, that he’d talked to Max like maybe he was still in there with the monster.

Sometimes, Steve thinks about Billy revving the Camaro’s engine across the parking lot. Sometimes he remembers it from outside the mall that night and sometimes he thinks about it because at the house in California where the Harringtons had spent three Christmases, Steve had a stupid fake set of cars, and Billy had liked to make the sound of a revving engine with his mouth. He’d been shockingly good at it. Steve should have known he’d get a loud car. He could have recognized Billy then, maybe.

He spends a lot of time here at the pool. He climbs the fence and then sits in the lifeguard’s chair. No one has really been back here to clean it out. It’s an abandoned sort of place, quiet and empty. There was worse to clean around town, funerals to attend. It hasn’t been that long, anyway, but something about October makes this place feel more abandoned. Sometimes, when he’s here, Steve goes and stands in the outline of bricks that Billy’s body had flown through, or he goes and stands in the sauna and blinks at the shattered glass. There’s still black on it. He wonders if, when they put all the caution tape up, they’d thought it was mold or something else bad and benign all at once. They can’t know it’s Billy Hargrove’s blood.

For now, he’s in the lifeguard’s chair, staring out at the pool and drumming the fingers of the hand not holding his ice cream cone on the armrest. He’s humming Christmas music. Outside the dance that night, the one Mike had brought El too, where Nancy had danced with Dustin and Steve had stood outside and smoked and thought about how he hates Christmas, he’d seen Billy. It had been for just a second. Billy had been driving by in the Camaro, blasting music too loudly, and Steve had been surprised it was Christmas music because he didn’t seem the type, and then he had been gone, and Steve had smoked alone outside the gym.

They hadn’t really ever talked in Hawkins, but ever since he’s realized that he’d _known_ Billy, that they’d spent the same week together - December 21st to 28th every year for three years - Steve’s started thinking a lot more about all the times Billy had just...been around. Not the times when he’d been the antagonist, or beating Steve’s face in, but when they had coexisted in the same world. He wonders, all the time--like right now humming the Christmas music that had been playing not inside the gym, but from the windows of Billy’s Camaro as he sped by that night--if Billy had known they knew each other.

Most of the time, he thinks that the answer to that question is no. Billy would have said something or they would have liked each other more, wouldn’t have been opposites, enemies, always fucking clashing. Some of the time, though, sometimes he thinks yes. Maybe, he thinks, that’s why Billy hated him so much. Steve forgot about him. Billy Hargrove, who was just Billy then, revving the engine of a little toy car, or laughing on the beach, or showing Steve how to stand on a surfboard in shallow waters and barely there waves, has been forgotten so many goddamn times.

People in Hawkins hadn’t really liked Billy, so of course when so many people died, he’s just one of many, and he’s not brought up much. Max almost never talks about him, but Steve thinks that she--like him--feels guilty, is holding the pieces of Billy she has close to her chest, doesn’t want to share them.

Or maybe he’s projecting. It’s not like he’s told Max that he’s known Billy longer than she has, or anything. He could tell her, maybe. He should tell her, maybe. He won’t, though. That boy by the ocean with the blue eyes is his and his alone. He doesn’t want to share him.

Steve finishes his ice cream and licks his lips, then hops out of the chair. He throws the container away in the trash can he empties once every two weeks, because it’s not like the garbage company is coming out to check the abandoned pool, but Steve is, he’s here so fucking often, and then he jumps over the fence and he goes home and takes a shower and works at the movie place, renting out horror movies to people and thinking _if you knew what I knew_ even though he smiles.

~

November 23rd:

“We need to talk.”

Steve feels like that’s the first thing anyone has said to him in months. That isn’t true, it can’t possibly be true. He read once that the reason it sounds so quiet when it snows is that it absorbs the sound. The world actually _is_ quieter. Maybe it’s been snowing in his head since July. Maybe he really has trapped himself in Christmases past. But that doesn’t make any sense. Those Christmases he spent with Billy Hargrove were sun-drenched and sandy.

In front of him, El snaps her fingers twice, inches from his face. Steve doesn’t move, but he does focus his gaze on her hand, and then on her face. “That’s rude,” he tells her. She probably picked it up from Max, though. Steve wonders if Max picked that up from Billy. The Billy he’d known never would have--

“ _Stop it_ ,” El says, loudly enough that the customers browsing the new releases section by the counter look up in surprise. Steve shoots her a look, but her expression is unmoving, and so he heaves a sigh.

“Sorry, folks,” he says. “My kid cousin is a pest sometimes,” and although people know Steve’s mom well and his dad well enough, no one says _you don’t have a kid cousin_. When a third of the town dies, you mostly stop asking questions about the people who are still around. Everyone has their secrets.

El is still staring at him. Steve glances at her, then goes back to what he’s actually supposed to be doing, which is entering returns. El keeps staring. 

For a little while in October, it had seemed like Joyce and Jonathan and Will were all going to leave. There had been a moving van. They’d packed everything up. In the end, they’d stayed. Joyce had been cagey about _why_ the few times that Steve’s seen her since then, and if Will knows, or El knows, neither of them are talking about it. Steve doesn’t want anything to do with the world that is monsters and secrets, so he doesn’t say anything about it at all, hasn’t since he first asked.

Besides, he’s got his secrets, too. He’s not sharing that boy on the beach with anyone.

Again, El snaps her fingers at him. Again, Steve realizes he’s zoned out. Maybe the reason he can’t remember anyone really having a conversation with him since July is because he ignored them.

El sighs. “When you get off work,” she says. “Look for me outside.”

Steve shrugs at her. He’ll give her a ride wherever she wants one, and he has to assume that’s what she wants. That’s what they all want from him, these days. Even Dustin, who once came to Steve for advice, really only asks him to take him to school. Maybe it’s because Steve doesn’t talk anymore.

He spends the rest of his shift in that same, blissful silence, breaking it only to talk to customers who want nothing from him and who, when the transaction is over, leave him to the excavation he’s been running in his head ever since he remembered the truth: that he knew Billy Hargrove before he was a jerk and before he was a monster, and he’d forgotten that, somehow.

At the end of his shift, after he’s locked up for the night, it’s dark and quiet and snowing pretty hard. Steve lights a cigarette and heads toward the BMW. He jumps half a foot in the air when El steps out in front of him.

“You forgot about me,” she says, but it isn’t an accusation. It could be, but it doesn’t need to be. She can read minds and Steve did forget.

“Sorry,” he says, and he is. He’s always surprised by the things that make him feel badly, which is different from the guilt he feels all the time, now. “I’ve been forgetting a lot about people, lately.” 

And by lately he means for eight long years. He should have _remembered_. He should have known when he saw Billy get out of that car way back when.

“Anyway,” Steve says. “You need a ride? We gotta go now. Roads’ll probably suck in a few hours.”

“No, I--” El starts, but she stops, suddenly, watching him. Steve doesn’t have the energy for this conversation. He never does, anymore. El squints, then her face relaxes. “Yes,” she says. “I need a ride. Will you drive me?”

Steve nods and unlocks the car. When they get inside, she presses her hands up against the heater and closes her eyes. She seems to relish the warmth. Steve cracks the window to let the smoke out and then says, “Where are we going?”

El watches him for a moment. “Mcdonald’s,” she says, and Steve gets the strangest impression that isn’t the whole story. It’s a Friday night and it's snowing, though. Steve doesn’t have anywhere else to be. He hasn’t had anywhere else to be in months. They get McDonald’s--the drive thru, at El’s request, so Steve understands it’s not the final destination. She orders a shockingly large amount of food, then stares at Steve until he pays, and slurps at her milkshake loudly in between giving him directions that aren’t back toward town.

“Listen,” Steve says. “The roads really are going to get bad, soon,” and he’s not sure that he wants to be stuck out there in the woods. If he has to be, El’s probably the person to be stuck with. He’s got a bat in the back, still. Always.

“It’s not much more,” El says. Her eyes are intent on the road. She slurps the milkshake. “Slow down,” she says, and then she’s tapping on his shoulder, “Turn here,” she says, “Right,” and so Steve does, down a quiet, long dirt road that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. El gives quiet directions for several more minutes and Steve finds himself in the parking lot of a small, concrete building, squat and unimpressive. It looks like an old storage facility or warehouse. He’s the only car in the lot, but there’s a garage. 

El slurps her milkshake _loudly_ in the seat next to him. 

“What is this?” he says, looking around.

“I have a secret,” El tells him as she collects the bags of Mcdonald’s full of fries and nuggets and burgers that she hasn’t touched. When Steve just blinks at her, she smiles.

~*~

Every week since August, which is the first time he was allowed to have visitors, the little girl who had been in his head brings him McDonald’s. She comes alone and calls herself Jane and sometimes El. She is sad and quiet and funny and loud. She reminds him, a little bit, of Max, but only sometimes, which Billy assumes means the two girls are still friends. He doesn’t know because he doesn’t ask. Billy never asks about Max or his dad or his friends or anything to do with his old life.

Sometimes, she acts like she forgot about the sauce, or something, and he’ll ask about that, “You bring the good stuff?” he’ll say and she’ll grin and toss it to him, and he’ll miss it, because he’s not fast, yet, and his reflexes aren’t good, but every week he nearly catches it.

Billy Hargrove, sitting in sweatpants and a t-shirt on the couch in the little cement room he almost never leaves, is thinking that tonight he’s going to catch that stupid little packet of sauce and that he will get to experience a true nugget dunking of actual victory.

It’s been the little things, since July, when he woke up in this concrete room and a friendly doctor told him that he wasn’t dead, but that there were complications, and they’re working on it.

That had meant months of physical therapy, of painful stretches that made Billy swear and gnash his teeth. Of petulance and refusal, demanding _what’s the fucking point_ over and over and over as they told him _again_ to reach his arms over his head, to stretch muscles that had been torn and shredded because _he_ had been torn and shredded. He should be _dead_ and he isn’t and honestly, that’s pretty fucking confusing.

A lot of it is confusing, but they let the little girl visit, and sometimes she answers his questions and always she brings food, so that breaks up the monotony of his days in this little concrete room with no windows. He’d asked about them, once, and they’d said _security concerns_ and for a little while he’d believed that meant maybe people were looking for him, but eventually he’d realized it meant they didn’t want him to be able to leave.

Billy can’t really blame them. He’s a killer. A monster. A crying, pathetic vessel for the thing that lived inside his goddamn head.

They’ve made the place as homey as a concrete bunker can be. Jane brings him stuff. There’s a rug, now, and throw pillows on his little couch. A quilt kind of blanket on his bed. He’s got slippers and nice, soft socks. He thinks she’s stealing all of this shit from stores around town, but she won’t tell him, just asks him about a color he might like and then next week, she brings it. She’s started bringing him books. At first, he’d asked for the classics, but reading made him tired, so now she brings books that she likes, and she reads them to him. Both of them like _The Outsiders_ , which he guesses makes a lot of fucking sense.

Her visits and the radio he’d been given are how he knows that he’s still in Hawkins, Indiana. He keeps asking the doctor why they can’t go someplace nice, like California for their research, and the doctor laughs like he’s telling a joke, like Billy wouldn’t let himself be shredded all over again to get out of this fucking state. Hell, Oklahoma would work.

She never asks him annoying questions, but the doctors do, all the time. They say shit like _do you want to know about your family_ and he mocks them in a childish voice when he has the energy. When he’s feeling _really_ energetic, he’ll say, “Do you think I wouldn’t fucking ask if I _did_ want to know about those assholes?” and when he has no energy at all to think about his life before that night when he was dragged down into the basement he doesn’t say anything at all. He rolls over in bed and closes his eyes and fakes slow, even breathing until they leave.

Tonight, though, he’s on the couch and he’s staring at the clock, because Jane is supposed to visit tonight, and she’s never late. His fingers twitch where he’s got them trying to look casual on the armrest. It hasn’t ever occurred to Billy to ask her how she gets here or if it’s safe, and now he’s worrying--as he might have, in another life, about Max--if she’s okay or if something happened.

Really, she’s just never late. Billy spends _all_ his time worrying about if Something Happened. If his regular nurse is gone, if there’s a new doctor, if someone pops back into his room off schedule to check in, those are all moments when Billy’s heart rate kicks up. He’s gotten used to routine, is the thing, and Billy used to fight against routine, but now he doesn’t really have the energy, and anyway, if things are going according to schedule, that means that thing isn’t back. 

So he scares easily when things aren’t how they’re supposed to be and sometimes he can hear his dad’s voice in his head, _pussy_ , and he wonders all the fucking time why it’s never his _mom_ ’s voice who comes to him late at night. 

Jane has visited every week since August and it has never occurred to him to ask why she would want to or why she is allowed. He’d just kind of gone with the flow of her visits just like he’d gone with the flow of the doctors and nurses. Maybe he’s done something wrong and they won’t allow him to have visitors anymore. He had called that one doctor a bitch two days ago, but in all fairness, he was being an _actual jerk_ and Billy feels like if you’re rude to the guy locked in a concrete room, you deserve to get called a bitch, but maybe they’d decided not to let her around, anymore.

_She was beautiful_. That’s what Jane had said when Billy nearly killed her. She’d been inside his head and she’d known. His fingers twitch again. Ridiculously, he thinks he might start crying. She’s fifteen minutes late, now. Maybe she’s not coming at all.

If she never comes again? Well? What’s he supposed to fucking do? 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, lifting both hands to scrub at his face. There’s a small victory in that motion. He couldn’t do it a few months ago and now he can. “I want a cigarette,” he says out loud because he’s pretty sure they tape him. “Hey, _hey_ , did you hear me? I want a fucking cigarette!” he yells that last part, but no one answers because they never do. “At least I’m _talking_!” he yells next, but just like all his anger, it’s performative these days.

He’s a kid trapped in a concrete room who was possessed by a fucking monster that knew _everything_ about him, that dug up whatever it wanted, and that little girl knows it.

If he doesn’t have chicken nuggets, or her visits, or his anger, then what the fuck does he have?

“Fuck _you_!” he yells at the ceiling, but he’s not stupid. These doctors probably know about the inside of his brain, too. They probably know he doesn’t mean it. “Fuck you,” he grumbles anyway. What else is he supposed to do?

~*~

“You have a secret and your secret likes chicken nuggets and is in this building?” Steve asks. The snow is coming down a little harder now. He’s not sure he wants to get out of the car. He’s scared, but he doesn’t want to tell El that. He nearly reaches into the back of the car to get the bat out. His fingers are itching for it, for some certainty that at the very least he’ll be able to fight back before those things get him.

Sometimes, he can’t believe what he did. Sometimes, he thinks about how lucky he was, rolling over the hood of that car just in time, how when the kids tell it it’s his hero story, but when he was finally alone, after everything, he’d sat alone in his dark living room and cried.

He’d wanted to be the hero, but there was nothing heroic about any of those times, not for Steve. Billy Hargrove had been the hero at the end, and he’d died for it, and Steve had _forgotten about him_ and that’s not heroic, that’s fucked up. 

“El, I think we should go home,” he says, because he’s picturing that stupid thing Dustin thought was a pet and had named. “Like, I’m just gonna drive us home,” and he puts the car in reverse, ready to turn around, but.

“No.”

When El says it, it’s a complete sentence. She punctuates it by holding his car absolutely still, or something. The key turns in the ignition and the engine dies. Steve exhales hard and looks at her. “El--”

“We’re late,” she says. “Take this,” and she shoves a milkshake at him. “I don’t know if he can have that,” she adds.

“El, come on, who is _he_ \--”

“Take this, too,” and she shoves something else into his arms, and Steve wants to say _you can just use your brain to carry all this!_ But he doesn’t. He wants to say _I’m scared_ , but he doesn’t say that either. She probably knows and doesn’t care. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s not just a little girl like the rest of them are little kids. El has seen and done some shit. She probably doesn’t care that she’s scaring him.

But it’s not like he has a choice, here. If it were up to him, he’d get back in his car and drive them both home, but El is clearly not about to let that happen. Steve shuts the car door with his hip--his hands are now full--and follows her, crunching through soft, fresh-fallen snow toward what seems to be a door.

El has a free hand, probably because Steve is acting as her delivery service, or something, and she presses a doorbell. “Hello, doctor,” she greets, her voice solem. “I have a friend with me.”

“What--I don’t know about--”

“That was not a question,” El fires off, so quick and harsh that the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stands up. “Open the door.”

“Of course, Jane,” the voice says after a pause.

Steve looks at El for a second, scared and--a little flattered. “Are we friends?” he asks.

El glances at him as the door creaks and then swings open. “Yes,” she says simply, and then she sets off down the hallway.

Steve expects to meet the doctor or be inspected, but the hall is empty of people. Once he’s in, the door swings shut behind him. Steve jumps and drops the milkshake, but it hovers and doesn’t crash. His eyes flicker to El. “There are no monsters here,” she says. He reaches out and takes it. He has no choice, really, except to believe her.

They stop at a thick doorway. El pauses. For the first time, Steve watches her hesitate. “El?” he asks quietly. “What is this?”

She chews her lip and Steve’s reminded that despite her iron will and spine, she’s a kid. He waits her out as she seems to think about what to do next. “There are no monsters here,” she settles on, a repetition that leaves Steve’s brow furrowed. “Doctor,” she says out loud, and there’s three beeps, a clang, the sound of something unlocking, Steve thinks, but she doesn’t move to open the door. “Jim said people like their privacy,” she says, maybe reading his mind. “And not to barge in.”

“He was probably talking about the whole mind reading thing,” Steve says helpfully, because what else is he going to say, and what the _fuck_ is on the other side of that door?

“Jim also said I have selective understanding,” El says, and she’s grinning, a little. She raises her hand to knock, maybe, “No monsters,” she says for the third time, a little heavy and serious.

“No monsters,” Steve agrees.

El knocks three times. There’s silence for several long seconds--a soundproof door, maybe? Steve gets the impression they are waiting for someone or something to come open it--and then creaking, and then the door is open.

“You’re never late,” Billy says as he pulls the door open, “I thought you might not be--oh, shit. Hi, Harrington.”

Steve drops the milkshake again, but El catches it.

El catches the milkshake, which she then hands to Billy Hargrove, who is alive and well and maybe a little thin and pale, but who is certainly not dead on the floor of a mall, which is where Steve is pretty positive he left him. He looks at El, who is slurping from her own milkshake again, and then at Billy, who is inspecting his. “I don’t know if I can have this,” Billy says to El, and she shrugs at him, and then Billy steps back and El goes first, and Steve follows her, because what the fuck _else_ is he going to do?

~*~

Billy said _Hi, Harrington_ and then talked about the milkshake, but in truth, he feels a little bit like he’s been hit by a train and it’s started to reverse, just to make sure he’s really felt its impact. He wants to turn to Jane and scream _what the fuck_ at her, but she can read minds, so he stares at her desperately, instead, and thinks it loudly, but the problem with her reading minds is that she can _probably_ hear the what the fuck, but she gets the rest of it too, he realizes, when she turns her gaze on him and there’s something about her face that is very young and very gentle.

Because Billy said _oh, shit_ and _hi, Harrington_ , but inside he’s shrivelling up, wants to crawl under his blankets and roll onto his side until Steve Harrington leaves and never comes back.

Billy doesn’t want to look at someone from his old life. Or, well, maybe he doesn’t want someone from his old life to look at him, is really the whole fucking issue. 

Jane is drinking loudly from her milkshake. It’s the only sound in the room, actually, because despite Billy opening the door to his little concrete home and bringing them inside, Harrington hasn’t actually said anything. 

Billy had already been on the verge of crying, which he does more now than he used to, and he’d already been something of a crier when he was stressed out, and so he really might start actually weeping, now, at any moment. He glances over at the bed and thinks about crawling back under those blankets, curling up into a little ball, pulling them over his head and hoping Harrington and all his silence will go back to where they came from.

Jane had talked once or twice about visitors, but he’d thought she meant Max, and he’d been pretty clear when he said no.

He opens his mouth to say something nasty, but _oh, shit, Hi, Harrington_ had taken all of the energy he can muster for performative nonchalance, and opening his mouth and just shrieking is probably not going to get anything accomplished.

That leaves crying as the only option on the table. Billy looks away and blinks fast, then swipes at a fucking traitorous tear as it slides down his face. Again, there’s that stupid, _lying_ sense of victory--oh, good for you champ, you can lift your arms to your face again to _hide your goddamn tears_.

_Pussy_ , says the voice in his brain that belongs to his dad.

_Hit him_ , says the voice in his brain that Billy used to rely on to keep himself safe from bullshit things like feelings.

But Billy has had his fill of violence, so he turns around and swipes at his face again, and then sets the milkshake down on the table.

Behind him, he hears a thud, then Harrington says, _“_ Ow, El, the fuck?” and Billy realizes Jane must have hit him, or kicked him, and he smiles a little bit, because maybe this bossy little girl is the voice in his head trying to keep him safe, now.

It makes sense, really. That’s what she’d been that night in the mall when the air was sticky and hot and humid and Billy was bleeding black blood. 

Behind him, Harrington clears his throat a few times. 

“What do you want?” Billy manages, and it’s more broken then angry, and of course he’s still half crying, and his arms are starting to feel tired, and he’s still facing away from Harrington like that’s going to hide what’s going on with his eyes and his face and his heartbeat. “Come to gawk at me? Hit me? It’d be a fair fight, now. You might even win.”

_I’d deserve it_ , Billy doesn’t say out loud, _if you wanted to_.

The nice thing about Jane being the only person he ever sees is that Billy knows that _she’s_ done shit, too. Not his shit, not as bad as him, but he doesn’t feel like has has to pretend with her, as much. He doesn’t have to grapple with his guilt head-on, but now Steve Harrington is here, the fallen golden boy, a hero, Billy knows now, who fought against those things long before Billy knew about them, who was fighting against those things the night that Billy beat his face in.

“Well?” Billy sneers, but it’s weak and they both know it. He kind of needs to sit down, but if he does, Harrington is going to be looking at his face. Billy closes both eyes and wills his body to stop producing tears, and then he sits down on the couch and faces Harrington.

There’s not a mirror in here, Billy had broken the two they’d tried to set up, but he knows what he looks like when he’s been crying: red eyes, blotchy cheeks. He sniffs and stares somewhere to the right of Harrington’s head, his jaw tight. The old Billy might have said _you too stupid to string words together, or something?_ But he isn’t that person anymore. He’s learning, in this very moment, that it takes a lot of fucking energy to pretend to be.

Energy is a finite resource. Currently, Billy is using all of his to not be fucking crying like some little bitch. 

“Sorry,” Harrington finally says. “It’s just. I thought you were dead? This is kind of a lot, man.”

It’s so honest and so simple and so fucking funny. Billy laughs, startled by it. “Yeah, no shit,” he says when he’s done, running a hand through his short hair. It’s growing back, now, from when they’d buzzed it. He hates it, but there’s no mirrors, so it’s fine. 

“The nuggets will be cold,” Jane says helpfully. Billy turns to look at her. He’d forgotten she was there as he took Harrington in. He looks nearly the same, just more tired and shaken up than he had before. His hair is still fucking ridiculous. Billy used to spend hours on his hair, but he’s willing to bet that Harrington just wakes up like that.

“No, he uses hair spray,” Jane says, and both Billy and Harrington turn to look at her. She smiles, almost sheepish, “Sorry?” she tries, but she’s not, and anyway, she did that on purpose, Billy is positive. She’s trying to make this feel normal. 

Like meeting your supposedly dead ex-nemesis in a concrete bunker the week before Thanksgiving could ever be _fucking normal_.

“I do use hairspray,” Harrington offers. “It helps keep all this--” and he makes a swooping motion with his hand, then tosses his hair back, and Billy gets an echo of the Harrington who must have run Hawkins High before everything fell apart, “Looking extra good.”

Billy snorts and looks away. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “Sit down,” he adds. “The nuggets are gonna get cold and the shit they feed me here is _not_ this good.” 

Harrington looks sheepish and confused all at once. “I uh, I don’t really know what I’m doing here? I didn’t know you were alive, so.”

Jane, sitting on the couch next to Billy--Harrington has settled down on the coffee table facing the couch, which is a weird choice, but Billy doesn’t have the energy to question it--makes an exasperated sound. “I _had_ a secret,” she says. “You _have_ one,” she adds, staring at Harrington.

His face does something weird, opens and softens, then shuts down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tells Jane, which all three of them have to know is a fucking lie. 

“Just coming to gawk at me?” Billy offers. “Resident murderer. Hawkins’s finest? Want to see if I can melt you into a pile of your own goo?”

Jane kicks him, this time. “Stop it,” she says. “Jim said we aren’t rude to guests unless they are annoying.”

“Maybe I think he’s annoying,” Billy grumbles.

“Well I think _you’re_ annoying,” Jane says.

Harrington snorts and both Billy and Jane turn to look at him. “Sorry,” he offers. “I just. It seems like you two are--friendly?” and he shrugs. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be--” he cuts himself off, frowns. “Well. In Hawkins,” he corrects, which Billy thinks is a weird caveat. “I haven’t seen you be actually friendly in Hawkins _ever_.”

“Well,” Billy mutters. “I didn’t really ever want to be friendly,” and Jane tosses him the nugget sauce. He misses it, but Harrington reaches down to catch it and passes it to him. It’s a thoughtless gesture, but it strikes Billy as impossibly kind all the same.

“Do you want to know about how Ma--”

“No,” Billy cuts him off razor fast, looking away. “No. I just want to eat my chicken nuggets in peace,” and that’s really what they do. Harrington and Jane talk, benign little things, and sometimes Billy laughs or joins in, but mostly he eats, chicken nuggets and french fries and half an apple pie and a few sips of the milkshake, which it turns out is too sweet for him to handle, really. He doesn’t talk. It takes a lot of energy, and eventually he’s just leaning back on the couch, watching Jane watch Harrington tell a story about the first time he tried to make chicken nuggets by himself.

He was nine years old, apparently. He nearly set the house on fire. Billy is about to ask where his parents are, but Harrington said, “and anyway, they couldn’t be mad because next week we were leaving for--” and then he stops, suddenly, and Jane is tense next to Billy on the couch, and Harrington clears his throat, “for vacation,” he finishes, and Billy gets the sense he’s missing something, but--

Honestly. It’s the best time he’s had since fucking _July_ and he’s learned that good times end fast and sudden, so he’s not about to stop this any sooner than he has to.

“El,” Harrington’s voice is soft and Billy blinks, fuzzy. Had he fallen asleep? “I think he’s tired. We should probably let him rest.”

“Fuck you, I’m not tired,” Billy says, but he is, and he only sounds like a child when he tries to protest. He sits up, instead, even though it makes him wince. Phantom pain when he’s exhausted, that’s a fun side effect of a monster punching you through the stomach and chest with its giant, monster legs.

“Well, I am,” Harrington says, and Billy gets the sense that he’s being given cover, something to soothe his ego. He swallows hard. “Hey,” Harrington offers, and something in his voice, in the way he says it, draws Billy’s gaze to look at him, to meet Harrington’s eyes. For a second, there is only silence. Billy feels like he is falling into it, like he might never get out. “It’s been good to see you,” Harrington says. “I’m glad you’re all right, Billy.”

They don’t touch or hug or anything after that. Billy stands up and Harrington watches his slow, unsteady shuffle towards the door. Everything is harder when he’s tired, and he’s tired, now. He hasn’t had this many people or this much stimulation since he was a fucking lifeguard, but he makes it to the door, opens it, says goodnight and then shuts it. He pretends, when he hears it creak and lock, that it was him who did that part, to keep the things that go bump in the night out there.

He knows, even as he crawls into bed and turns out the lights and curls up under his blankets that the monsters are in here.

It was nice to play pretend tonight, anyway.

~*~

In the car, driving home, El clears the roads of snow with her magic, or whatever, and so Steve doesn’t even have the excuse of focusing on the drive. He looks over at her as they get back into town. Only the plows are out. It’s late and eerily quiet. “You should have told me,” Steve says.

El glances at him and shrugs. “Why?” she asks, and Steve doesn’t have an answer so he doesn’t offer one. She sighs. “I just did,” she reminds him.

The red light turns green and Steve pulls through it. He’s looking straight ahead, out into the snow and the cold night air when he says, “He doesn’t remember.”

He hears more than sees El shrug again. “No,” she says finally. “But he will.”


	2. December 1st

December 1st:

A little over a week after the first time Steve visits Billy, he goes back to see him again. It had started with him at the pool, again, perched in the lifeguard chair, eating ice cream and freezing half to death. He’d been staring over at the empty basin, miserable and moody and fucking _cold,_ and he’d been thinking about how when he was eight years old, he’d fallen down on the beach and a kid with very blue eyes had helped him up, but that isn’t quite right.

He’s sitting in the chair and he’s sure there’s something that he can’t remember. He closes his eyes and tries to think about what that could be, what it is, but he can’t call it up, can’t solve the mystery for himself. Not for the first time, he wishes that he could just ask Billy. 

And then he remembers that he can.

He’s not sure they’ll let him in without El, but it’s not like he’s doing anything better these days. The video shop had fired him yesterday over Robin’s well intentioned and, honestly, gallant protests in defense of his honor. It’s hard to explain _no, Steve isn’t a bad employee, he’s just really fucked in the head right now_ when you can’t talk about the monsters or the Russian torture and, honestly, _everyone_ in town is also pretty messed up...so he’d been fired. 

He returned the uniform pieces that morning and he’d bought some ice cream while he was there, which is funny if he thinks about it too hard, because he could’ve gotten ice cream from the _last_ place he doesn’t work at anymore and--

Anyway.

He doesn’t have to tell his parents about it yet because they’re away as of Thanksgiving morning. It had been a last minute decision. California, again, although they haven’t gone there since he was ten years old. He’d nearly asked if he could go with them. They probably would have been too shocked to say no, but the only reason he’d really want to go back to California is the boy with the blue eyes he’s only just remembered, and it turns out he’s in Hawkins.

So he gets in the BMW and stops by McDonald’s for a milkshake, fries, and nuggets and a large coffee for himself. It’s just starting to get dark out when he turns on the long road that leads to the little parking lot. He’d thought maybe that because it’s earlier in the afternoon there would be cars, but there aren’t. He holds the bag of McDonald’s and shivers in his fucking pea coat as he presses the doorbell button.

Why is he even here? Billy’s made it pretty clear since he got to Hawkins that he isn’t interested in seeing Steve.

Except he’d almost seemed to enjoy the company last time and Steve has all these fucking questions. He’s got no one else to ask and no one else to talk to and even if he did, Steve probably wouldn’t want to talk to them anyway.

Since July, since the shower, since that frozen-foot moment, the only person he’s wanted to talk to is Billy Hargrove. He jabs the doorbell button again and takes a deep breath. “I’m here to see Billy,” he says when there’s an electric sounding buzz that must be a radio.

For several seemingly endless heartbeats, there is absolute silence. 

Then the door creaks open.

Steve is expecting the same dark and empty hallway, but today there is someone in a white lab coat with a clipboard. “We weren’t expecting anyone,” the doctor says, but it’s not unfriendly. He has a face Steve thinks children’s book authors would describe as _kind_. He does not introduce himself or ask Steve’s name. Steve has to wonder if that’s because he already knows it.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I uh, just thought I’d drop by. Tis the damn season and--everything,” it’s a lame excuse. He’s just worried if he says _I have questions that only Billy can answer_ he’ll get kicked the fuck out. 

“Right,” the doctor says, peering at him. There’s a long and awkward pause. “Well, you know the way,” and he motions, “You can’t miss it. It’s the only door you can see.”

Steve wonders, as he turns and starts down the hall, about all the doors he _can’t_ see, apparently, but he doesn’t ask. He stands at Billy’s door and there’s a click, a whir, the sound of something unlocking. Steve is about to push it open when he remembers what El said about privacy. He knocks.

There’s silence, which he expected. The door is soundproofed, but then it’s open and Billy is standing on the other side. He still looks thin and tired and quiet. He looks a little irritated, too, maybe. When he sees Steve, his expression settles into something startled before it twists into something sour.

Steve is apparently not alone in not knowing how to feel about all this.

“What are you doing here?” Billy asks. He’s leaning on the door. He’s shirtless, which had been unremarkable at first because of basketball and locker rooms, but now Steve pauses to take him in. He’s so much thinner and his skin is bruised--fresh bruises, but the worst part, the worst part are the scars. Steve nearly reaches out to touch them. “Harrington,” Billy says, which stops him, but just barely.

Steve’s been staring. He drags his eyes up to meet Billy’s instead.

_Hey, who is this new kid? What a fucking weirdo! Get off our beach, weirdo!_

_Did you just push him? Yeah, I’d run too! Jerk! Sorry about them. What’s your name_?

“Harrington,” Billy says, snapping his fingers in front of Steve’s nose. Steve blinks.

“Guess she didn’t learn it from Max,” he says.

Billy flinches, a visible, full-body thing when he hears her name, but he gamely says, “What?”

“The rude snapping thing,” Steve says. “El did it to me the other night. Before, uh. Before she brought me here, actually.”

“Brings us back to the question, Harrington,” Billy says. “What the fuck are you doing here? And is that McDonald’s?” he reaches out for the bag and the milkshake before Steve can stop him. Too late, Steve realizes he left his coffee in the car. “Well,” Billy says, “You might as well come in.”

Why can’t Steve remember? Those flashes--a conversation, a shove, the too-hot sun burning his winter-pale skin--are the most he’s remembered from those visits since he started spending all his time trying to unpack them, trying to recall every vivid detail.

It seems impossible that the Billy who sits on the couch, small and exhausted and nervous, is the boy on that beach. _Yeah, I’d run too!_

Had he been sticking up for Steve? 

Steve wishes he had brought in his coffee because then at least he’d have something to do with his hands. He considers sitting down on the coffee table again, like he had the last time they’d visited, but he decides against it. It would look weird, he thinks, and besides, it would mean he has no choice but to stare at Billy instead of anything else in the room. He’s not sure that he feels ready, yet, to stare at Billy.

The couch isn’t very comfortable. Steve sits down and then shifts his weight, pulls his legs up. _Criss cross applesauce_ , he thinks it’s called as he folds himself together, his fingers fidgeting with the jacket he’d forgotten to take off. Probably he’s going to be too warm, soon. Billy doesn’t have a shirt on. The reminder brings Steve’s gaze over to Billy, the scars on his chest, the blue of his eyes.

He’s chewing on a chicken nugget. When he catches Steve staring he crosses his eyes and sticks his tongue out, full of food.

“Gross,” Steve says, almost relieved by the action. He stands up and shrugs his coat off, then wanders across the room to hang it on the doorknob. There’s not really anywhere else to put it. “Why is there a doorknob?” Steve asks.

“So I can open the door,” Billy says, like _duh_.

“No, I mean. I get that, but do you really get to open the door?” Because they both know he’s locked inside. 

It’s like Steve sucked all the air out of the room. When he turns around, Billy is staring at him, and then he’s looking away, his jaw tight. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “I don’t--really talk to people anymore. I wasn’t thinking.”

_Don’t you ever think_? Steve’s mom’s voice is loud in the memory, harsh, _we don’t know anything about that boy! He could be a thief! You brought him here! Why don’t you ever think, Steve?_

He’d set his chin. _He’s my friend, mom. I want him to stay for dinner_.

_Your father and I are going out. We’re not leaving you with a stranger_.

_I HATE YOU!_ He wonders if he’d screamed it as loudly in that moment as he does in his memory. 

“Harrington?”

Steve glances up, lost in the hazy fog of a half-remembered thing, to find Billy on his feet. “Yeah,” he mutters, walking back across the room. He drops down to sit on the couch. “I don’t know why I’m here,” Steve says. “I guess I have questions.”

Beside him, Billy goes from half-relaxed to absolutely rigid. His voice is careful and measured, guarded where Steve thinks it once would have been mean and, if he reaches back farther in his memory, maybe once--a long time ago--it might have been curious. “I don’t have answers for you,” Billy says slowly. “I don’t know why it picked me. I don’t know why I--”

“Oh,” Steve cuts him off. “No, not--not about that.” He hesitates. “About California, actually,” and he glances at Billy, looking for something--a flicker of recognition, maybe, a memory. He doesn’t get anything from him, though. Nothing at all. Mostly, Billy just looks confused. 

“Uh, all right,” Billy says finally. 

“Did you surf?” Steve asks first. That’s the clearest memory for him: standing on wobbling legs, the child-sized board bobbing beneath him. He thinks it may actually not have been a surfboard, but something smaller. He remembers, _I don’t think you’re ready for a real board. My friend says they can knock your teeth out_. There was a boy in the water, they were only waist deep. He was holding Steve’s hands while Steve tried to catch his balance. 

Next to him, though, Billy goes absolutely fucking rigid. He coughs and it’s a hacking, broken thing. “Water,” he manages, and Steve nearly says that yes, water is where you surf before he realizes that Billy’s _asking_ for whatever, and then he just feels like an asshole. Steve jumps to his feet and looks around the room. He hands Billy the milkshake. Billy, still coughing, nearly knocks it to the floor. “ _Water_ ,” he says again.

Steve finally spots a pitcher on a table near the bed. He cuts across the room toward it. He hadn’t really looked at Billy’s bed before because when he was just looking around the room, it had looked normal. It doesn’t, now. There’s the bed with the quilt and the pillows--wait, those pillows are from _his_ house, what?--but around the bed, there are machines. They’re quiet, now, turned off, except for one. Steve squints at the numbers, but he’s got no idea what they mean, and behind him, Billy’s still coughing. 

Steve grabs the pitcher and the empty glass next to it, spills water in his haste to pour, and then practically throws the glass at Billy. He chugs it and the coughing subsides. He grips the edge of the couch tightly, white-knuckled, and his breath seems almost to rattle in his lungs. Steve stands there, half next to him, holding the pitcher of water and the now empty glass, unsure of what he’s supposed to do next. 

Eventually, Billy’s tight grip on the couch relaxes and his shoulders sink. He sits back, half-sprawled, legs open, and he looks a lot like the Billy that Steve used to know, then, sure of himself, better than Steve, watching through lazy, confident blue eyes, but his breath still rattles and his chest rises and falls too fast, and also, there are the scars. “What happened?” Steve asks. He’s still standing there with the fucking glass of water.

“You can sit,” Billy mutters. He leans forward, then, elbows on his knees, rubs his hands through his shorter hair and exhales so long and slowly that Steve worries Billy is deflating, that he’ll crumble to the floor and never get up again. “It fucked up my lungs or my throat or something,” he says after another second of silence. “They’re healing. Or the doctors say, anyway. It happens less? But not as fast as the rest of me did. I dunno. Something to do with why I--” Billy breaks off, seems at a loss for words.

Steve thinks of the pool and the broken, empty place in the bricks he sometimes stands in, reaching his fingertips out to touch the places where the wall is still solid. “Didn’t die after you got thrown through a brick wall?”

Billy looks surprised that Steve knows, which Steve nearly resents. He’s not so useless that they don’t tell him anything. Billy must know that he knows. He was there that night, with fireworks and everything. That summary, in Steve’s head, sounds like a big romantic gesture, a proposal. He looks at Billy and his scars and the aftermath of an ugly, broken cough and reminds himself that it was actually a funeral. 

“Do you want me to put a shirt on?” Billy asks suddenly, which isn’t an answer to what Steve said, but maybe that conversation is done. Steve can’t imagine any Billy--not the Billy on the beach, or the Billy in Hawkins, or the Billy in this room with him right now--saying _yeah, you’re right_ , so it makes sense that they’re just moving on.

This question feels like a strange sort of trap. If Steve says _no_ , will Billy think he wants to see him shirtless? That he wants to ogle the scars? It’s true that Steve is fighting an urge that he does not understand to reach out and touch them, to map his fingers to those broken parts, but he’s hardly going to act on it. 

If he says _yes_ , will Billy think that Steve is disgusted by him? That he doesn’t want to see the truth of what they all know?

“I don’t care,” Steve settles on, which seems to satisfy Billy. 

“You can sit,” Billy repeats. Steve, still standing, finds himself red-cheeked and embarrassed, but the last time he was here, Billy had _cried_ , so forgetting to sit back down is probably fine. He sets the water and the pitcher where Billy can reach them, and then he sits back down on the couch.

“It needs a rug, I think,” Steve says after several minutes of silence. There’s a long, empty span of concrete floor between the door and where they’re sitting on the couch. It would probably be cold on bare feet.

Billy’s eyes follow his. Steve glances at him. “A rug is probably harder for her to steal,” Billy says. “All this shit--Jane gets it for me.”

So the pillows _are_ from his house. Not that his parents would ever notice they’re missing. Steve lives there. He almost never leaves. He didn’t even notice. “Yeah,” he says, and for several long minutes, neither of them say anything else. 

“I did surf,” Billy says, finally. “In California.” 

More silence follows. Steve wants to say _did you teach me how to surf_? But he’s afraid to really ask. If Billy says _no_ , that might mean that Steve is wrong. It’s possible, he knows, he’s been thinking about this since he found out Billy is alive, that Steve is making all these memories up. Nancy would tell him he’s been through a trauma. Nancy would tell him the brain does strange things to cope with loss. Maybe his brain told him a story to help him understand why Billy’s death had stolen his breath away. 

“I’d be bad at it,” Steve says. “A good swimmer, but. I think I’d be bad at surfing.”

“You’ve got legs like a baby deer,” Billy says. “Gotta plant your feet.”

Steve glances at him in disbelief and then they’re both grinning. It’s hardly loud and easy laughter, but it’s a shared smile, a lingering one. The silence they fall into after that is a little more comfortable. 

Eventually, Billy’s eyes drift shut and stay shut for longer and longer. Steve realizes that he’s probably overstayed his welcome. “I’m gonna head out,” he says, and his voice is nearly a whisper, like he’s afraid of startling Billy.

Billy, whose eyes open and lock on his with such intensity that Steve nearly looks away. “Yeah,” Billy says after a pause. “All right.”

Steve reaches out to clean up the mess of the food he’d left. He hesitates again. _I have questions_ , he’d said, and he’d only been able to ask one. “I’ll be back,” he says. 

Another long pause, but Steve can feel Billy’s eyes on him. “All right,” Billy says again, but it sounds different. It sounds relieved.

Steve gathers all the McDonald’s up and picks up his coat. He shrugs it on, fumbling with the buttons for a second before he reaches for the bag now empty of food. It’s filled with trash. “Night, Billy,” he offers, and as he says it, he hears the whirring, clicking sound of the door preparing to open. It’s a strange reminder that he can leave, but Billy isn’t allowed to. Steve wonders if he’ll ever be. He thinks of Billy coughing and wonders if he even wants to. 

“Night, Harrington,” Billy says, and the door swings open and Steve finds himself in a long, empty hallway. He’s expecting the doctor, some sort of follow up question, some swearing of secret-keeping, but after a few moments of standing outside in the hallway next to the door that had slid shut nearly as soon as he’d stepped outside, Steve walks back out the way he came.

It’s a frigid night and later than Steve had thought it would be. He slides into the car and blasts the heat, then presses his palms against it like El had the night she’d brought him here. He stays outside for nearly another twenty minutes. He realizes that he’s still waiting for someone to follow up with him.

He drives home, eventually. He drinks his coffee even though it’s cold.

_I don’t like this_. Steve had made a face. _It just tastes cold_.

_I told you that wasn’t enough flavor_. Billy had shoved the ice cone, snow cone, snowball? Steve can’t remember what it’s called. _Try mine. I’ll see if the guy will let me add more to yours._

Billy had been right, Steve thinks as he pulls into the driveway of his cold and quiet and empty house, he hadn’t done enough flavor. It had been delicious.

_He wouldn’t let me_ , Billy said. _But that’s okay. You keep mine. You gotta have them on the beach fresh. It’s a good memory_.

Steve, still in his car, is surprised to find his grip on the steering wheel white-knuckled. He wants to go back in time, he wants his little nine year old self to say, _it is, Billy_ , _it is such a good memory_.


	3. December 5th

December 5th:

Billy is napping when the door starts to whirr its warning that someone is outside. The sound always wakes him up. He glances at his clock, a little groggy from the interrupted sleep. It’s the early afternoon. They’d been so fucking startled when he asked for the clock, which makes sense. Time is fake here in his little room. It wouldn’t matter if it was Monday or Friday or Sunday, but he likes to know. It helps remind him there’s a world out there, even if he’s never going to get to see it again.

The door pauses, clanks, grinds. Billy holds his breath to see if it’s a doctor or a nurse. They’ve been doing more tests, lately. _Just checking_ , they say, whenever he asks why, but after a few seconds there’s a timid knock, and that’s how Billy knows that it’s Harrington, back again, just like he’d said he would be. 

The nurses and doctors knock once and don’t wait for an answer. It’s a firm warning, then their presence in the room no matter what he’s doing. Jane’s knock is also firm, although she waits, and it always sounds a little childish to Billy, almost eager, like she can’t wait to see him, but he could just be projecting. He’s been so stupidly, ridiculously grateful for her visits that it’s been hard for him to wrap his head around.

This knock, though. It’s too many taps and feather-light. If the door hadn’t woken Billy up, this knock might not have.

He hesitates for a second before he tugs on a t-shirt. Today, he’s in basketball shorts and no socks. He’s never sure where they get the clothes from, but these say _Hawkins High_ and everything. Maybe his dad brought them? That thought makes him bristle. His dad shouldn’t know him. His dad can _never_ know him again.

It’s an easy thought to think and an easy anger to hold, made worse with the knowledge that his dad probably just doesn’t _want_ to know him, and it’s one more way that he still has power over Billy, even after everything that happened.

Billy pulls the door open and his eyes get a little wide. “Harrington,” he says, “What the fuck?”

Jane’s visits bring him company and the nurses and doctors bring him disruption, but Harrington, when he visits? These last two times he’s been here? Harrington brings a sense of normalcy.

He looks just as tired as he has the last two times. Billy doesn’t have a mirror in here, but sometimes he wants to ask if Harrington has one because holy shit, the bags under his eyes and how pale he is are a little fucking weird. Only one of them is actually locked up in a concrete room with no access to the sun and it sure as shit isn’t Harrington.

He’s also holding a large shopping bag and what is clearly a rug under one arm. It looks a little heavy. Some older, more private part of Billy is enjoying making him wait out in the hall.

“Billy, _move_ ,” Harrington says.

“There better be McDonald’s,” Billy answers, stepping out of the way. “All I ask for is nuggets. Not a home decorating service.”

“This isn’t a home,” Harrington says, which makes Billy flinch, which Harrington must see because he hastily tacks on, “Yet, I mean. Rugs _make_ a home. Just ask my mother. She has eight thousand of them. I took this one from storage, but if you hate it, I can bring a different one next time.”

_Next time_ , Harrington says. Billy swallows hard. He briefly entertains the idea of saying he hates it just to make Harrington have to carry it back out.

No, that’s a lie. He briefly entertains the idea of saying he hates the goddamn rug just to make sure that Harrington comes back. 

Harrington rolls out the rug, though, and smoothes it with such care that Billy’s finding himself picturing those hands on him, on his scars. He swallows and looks away for a second, but when he looks back down, Harrington, still in a crouch, is staring up at him. He’s a little bit like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head and a treat, for a _good job_.

The truth is, Billy _does_ like the rug. It looks expensive and the colors are rich and red-based. It brightens his little concrete room almost instantly, warming it. It _is_ homier in here with that rug. He steps forward, half hesitant, and it’s plush and soft beneath his feet. He’d never tell Harrington this, but sometimes Billy paces from one end of the room to another, hand in his hair, unable to talk or think, and after, when he’s done, his legs hurt. This rug, how soft it is. He thinks it might help with that. 

He’s not sure what to say. “Thank you,” he manages after a moment. And then, because his voice sounds too raw, he reaches down and does actually pat Harrington’s head like he’s a puppy.

Harrington grins at him, clearly pleased by Billy’s pleasure, swatting Billy’s hand away as he stands up. “Let’s show you what else Santa brought,” Harrington says.

Billy grins. “I’m not sitting in your lap,” he says.

“Wait until you see before you say _that_ ,” Harrington answers, and Billy wonders _would you let me_? But he doesn’t say it out loud. 

It’s just that Harrington is the first person his own age who Billy has seen in months. It’s just that Harrington is the first person who Billy has seen his own age with eyes like that. It’s just--

It’s just that ever since he got to Hawkins and first laid eyes on Steve Harrington, it’s always felt a little bit like they were _meant to be_.

Which is stupid for several reasons, the least of which being they are _both guys_ and Harrington is definitely not like him. Billy could laugh or cry about that. Imagine the _least_ of his problems being his sexuality. It’s a wild turn of events, but then, he is a murderer who was possessed by some sort of monster from another dimension, so. It really is all about perspective.

He wonders how his dad would feel about _that_ argument.

He’s thinking a lot about his dad today.

_Pussy_.

“What else you got?” Billy asks.

“McDonald’s,” Harrington says, pulling the bag out and handing it to Billy, but that’s not all. He’s got towels and sweatshirts and sweatpants. He’s got new socks. He’s got--

“Books,” Billy breathes out, shocked at how much he wants them.

“El told me that you like reading,” Harrington says. “I guess it makes sense. You were always reading in the back of science class.”

“I knew all the shit,” Billy says defensively, but really he’s thinking _how did you notice that?_ “The books were more interesting. I took different classes back in California.”

Harrington nods. “Makes sense,” he says, no judgement at all. “Speaking of California--”

The last time Harrington asked him about California, Billy had half of a panic attack. He’s never thought about his mom so much. He’s never cried so fucking hard in his life as he did with those memories at the surface all over again. The last good parent he had, sure, but she’s also the _worst_ parent he had, and the other one is his dad, so that’s fucking saying something.

“Let’s eat,” Billy says, “If we’re gonna do this.” They sit down on Billy’s new old rug, a little bit like a picnic, and Harrington watches him as he pops a french fry into his mouth. It takes Billy a few minutes to realize Harrington is waiting for Billy to tell him that he’s ready. “Uh, so, about California?” Billy says, going for nonchalant.

“What was the best part?” Harrington asks him.

Shit. That’s a tough question. Billy stalls for time by chewing a nugget slowly, then dipping another in sauce, also slowly, and then slowly chewing that. “I mean, everything,” Billy says eventually, which is true. The sun, that sand, the spice in the food, the heat, the-- “Well, this is dumb,” he offers and then he wonders when he became a person who worried what he was about to say might sound dumb, “But there were these like, things you could buy on the beach? Just shaved ice and like all the syrup you want, as many flavors, they like. If they knew you, they’d let you pull the levers.”

Harrington’s face does something that Billy doesn’t understand. His mouth opens and then snaps shut. He swallows. “That,” he says eventually, “Sounds great.”

Billy spins a nugget idly in sauce. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s just like, a thing I miss, I guess.”

There’s silence again. “Okay,” Harrington says, “What about--”

“Wait,” Billy says, stopping him. “That’s not fair.”

“What?” Harrington’s eyes are a little wild.

“I should get to ask you a question now,” Billy says. “That’s fair. It’s not fair if you’re the only one who gets to ask shit.”

“Uh, okay,” Harrington says slowly. “Sure. Shoot.”

Which leaves Billy scrambling to think of a question to ask. If he’s honest, he has a thousand of them, but it’s hard to be honest and it’s harder still to ask about Max, who is in high school now, or about Carol and Tommy, off at college and probably in love, or about Harrington, even, and why he’s so tired looking, so thin, so--sad. There’s silence again, but it’s less comfortable this time. Billy realizes that Harrington looks kind of nervous and he nearly asks _what are you afraid of?_ But he can’t ask that question. He can’t even allow himself to think about the answer. He also won’t ask _why are you here?_ Again, because the last time he asked, Harrington said _I have questions_ , and really, trading questions is just a way for Billy to make sure that Harrington doesn’t get all his answers too soon.

It’s harder to think about staying in this little concrete room, even with his new rug, if Harrington stops visiting and this is only the third visit, so Billy is well and truly fucked.

“What movies are coming out? Or have come out? What--what have you seen?”

Harrington had looked prepared for the hardest questions of his life. He seems thrown by Billy’s softball. “Uh,” he says. “Have you seen _St. Elmo’s Fire_?” and Billy just blinks at him, and then Harrington goes a little pale. “Oh, nevermind,” he mutters.

“What?” Billy says.

“It uh. Came out. At the end of--of June. So.” He looks away. “ _Back to the Future_ was good, too,” he adds. “I didn’t get it the first time I saw it.” He still won’t look at Billy.

Harrington isn’t telling Billy something, Billy knows that much. He’d ask, but it’s not his turn, and anyway--and anyway it’s weird to think about the world after he’d been pulled into that fucking basement. It’s weird to think it kept spinning as he was melting in his own head and _literally_ melting the people who lived in the town with him. It isn’t fucking fair, actually. He was an asshole, but he wasn’t a bad person. He’ll never understand why it happened to him.

_It’s because you’re weak_ , says the voice in his head that always reminds him of his father. Billy closes his eyes.

“Hey,” Harrington says. He’s touching Billy’s knee. Billy jumps half out of his skin and richochets backwards, slams into the door, grunts with the pain of the impact on his fragile fucking body. No one has touched him, _no one_ has touched him with bare, ungloved hands since--

Well, since everyone he was getting ready to melt tried to grab at him to say _please, no_ , and Heather, a monster herself by then, had touched him with such gentleness. 

Maybe Jane has touched him, but as he breathes heavily against the door, Billy realizes she maybe hasn’t. Not a high five or a handshake or anything. It makes sense, maybe. She’s got that freaky brain thing going on and that’s way more connection based than touch. Billy’s just always been tactile. He’s missed it and Harrington had just touched his knee.

He’s coughing, again.

Harrington is ready this time, apparently, because he’s next to Billy, crouching, one hand on Billy’s shoulder, squeezing, and the other hand holding a glass of water. Billy didn’t even have to ask. He takes it and gulps it down, shuddering a little bit, but the coughing subsides. He’s already dreading Harrington moving away, but he doesn’t. He drops down to sit next to Billy against the door and their shoulders touch. It takes everything that Billy has in him not to lean into that warmth.

Honestly, he’d probably knock Harrington over. He doesn’t look like his body is up to much more than Billy’s is these days.

They’re quiet for a while, but then Harrington says, “My turn,” quietly, and Billy nods, and Harrington still doesn’t pull away. “What’s the best book you’ve ever read?” Harrington asks, and maybe he senses that Billy can’t handle a question about California, something that would reveal him to be a whole human with a history outside this room.

“That’s easy,” Billy says. “I’m not like, a literary critic or anything, but that one,” he points across the room, to the table next to his bed, surrounded by machines. There’s only one book on it. He’d been reading it last night before he went to sleep. All the other books he keeps stacked against the wall, but not that one. “ _The Outsiders_.”

“Oh,” Harrington says. “I know that one. I was always pissed about it because you know I’d be a soc.” He’s quiet. “I said it _socks_ , once. Nancy laughed at me.”

“That’s stupid,” Billy says before he can stop himself. It’s Harrington’s turn to flinch. “You aren’t like those assholes.”

Harrington pauses. “Oh,” he says. “I was, though,” and he says it so quietly. “I used to be. Anyway, I thought you meant I was--nevermind.”

“I think everyone says _socks_ ,” Billy offers.

“Maybe,” Harrington sounds doubtful, but he accepts Billy’s olive branch for what it is. “Your turn,” Harrington says after another second.

“How long have you known about them?” Billy asks because he’s been wondering and he can’t _not_ ask. It’s an abrupt change in subject, but Harrington, his eyes sweeping the room suddenly, doesn’t miss a beat.

“A few years,” Harrington answers. There’s no hesitation. His voice is a little dull, almost like he’s reading off a prepared statement. “Since Will went missing. You weren’t here yet, but they were. Maybe they were always here.”

_They_. Billy thinks of it so often as an _it_ , but Harrington is probably right to say _they_. Still, the thought is terrifying. Sometimes, Billy lets himself believe this little concrete room is to protect him, but he’s not stupid. It knows him. He knows it. These walls--they would dissolve like cotton candy if it came back looking for him. “I don’t think telling you would have helped,” Harrington offers. “But I’m sorry we didn’t.”

It is the first time someone has apologized to him about what happened. Billy’s been craving that regret, but the second he has it, he wants to claw his own eyeballs out, and Harrington’s too. “ _Don’t_ apologize to me,” he snarls, and it’s vicious and sudden and comes from his chest. “After what I did--after what _I did_ \--” and then, maybe the fact that it comes from his chest is why he starts coughing and coughing and coughing. Harrington gets him water, but it doesn’t help. Billy feels like his throat is on fire, is sandpaper. He’s clutching at Harrington’s arm before long, trying to get air, unable to.

Behind them, the door clicks and whirrs. When it swings open--no knock--it sends both of them sprawling. They’d been leaning against it. Doctors and nurses surge in--two of each--and they grab Billy under the arms. He fights them with what little energy he has. He’s scared of them, suddenly. He’s scared of everything.

“Hey!” he hears Harrington’s voice over his own garbled snarls and hacking coughs. “Hey, what are you doing? Leave him alone! Stop--”

There’s something over his face, over his mouth. Billy _screams_ , then, lashing out, clawing at the arms of the people holding him down, but then all at once things get kind of fuzzy.

The last thing he sees is Harrington, at the foot of his bed, looking horrified.

_Good_ , Billy thinks as he sinks into darkness, _I’m a fucking horror_. 

~*~

They take Steve down a hallway and into a wood-paneled room that looks like his dad’s study. There’s a desk, soft chairs, a record player in the corner. There’s a rug in here, he notes, a little dully. He’s guided to a chair by one of the nurses, who leaves. He listens, but there’s no click or whirr or clang of the door. He is not a prisoner, here. At least, not obviously.

After several minutes, the door opens. The kind-faced doctor who did not introduce himself walks in and settles into the chair behind the desk. He’s watching Steve even as he’s flipping through a book in front of him. He uncaps a pen and looks down, jots a note for a few minutes.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, breaking the silence. He’s surprised that his voice still works.

“Entering your visit in the log,” the doctor says. He sounds calm and not angry. Steve had thought he might be angry.

“I didn’t mean to upse--”

“It happens,” the doctor says. “It wasn’t your fault. Billy has been through a great difficulty and there is much we are still learning about him, about how to help him. We _are_ trying to do that, you know. Help him.”

Steve licks at his lower lip and wonders if he believes this man. But El does, so. He should, probably. “Am I going to be allowed to come back?”

“Oh, my. I should think so, yes,” the doctor says. “It’s had quite a positive impact on Billy, today notwithstanding, of course. You are welcome to continue visiting. You told him you had questions. I think it is good for him to be thinking critically, to be remembering. Even if it is--hard.”

Steve nods. “Okay,” he says. “Should I go?” he means _can I go_?

“If you’d like to,” the doctor answers. “I had you brought here mostly so that you could have a moment to gather yourself. Billy will sleep the rest of the day, so you don’t need to worry about saying goodbye. I’ll let him know you plan to return, if you do?”

“I do,” Steve says, and then he stands up and walks out of the room. They were right, he thinks, standing back in the hallway. When he turns around to look for the door he just walked through, he can’t see it at all. He turns away from the wall and his steps echo down the hallway. Steve gets into his car. He drives home.

It’s only once he’s in bed that night, hours and hours later, that he realizes he’d never told the doctor what the two of them talk about.

It’s only once he tries to close his eyes that he realizes the doctor had been listening to them the whole time.

He shivers. Sleep, that night, is restless.


	4. December 8th

December 8th:

There have been several days in between his first few visits, but Steve barely makes it two and a half days before he’s itching to go see Billy. It’s easy to have the time for that when he doesn’t have a job or anything else to do, no other responsibilities. Maybe Dustin is a little confused when Steve calls to say that he can’t pick him up from the club thing he’s doing after school, but that’s fine. He doesn’t ask any questions, really. Just sounds annoyed. Steve wonders if all teenagers are that selfish, that unconcerned with the people around them, and then he remembers himself and Barb and Nancy and--and he thinks yeah, probably they are.

It’s ten in the morning and Steve is wearing an apron, peering into the oven and lifting the lid off a pot inside. He’s been up since four, unable to sleep, which was just enough time to put some meat in some vegetables to braise. He didn’t used to cook, but his mom has so many books, and Steve has had so many sleepless nights since July that he’d just started buying ingredients to keep around the house, cooking himself lavish meals that took hours, sipping wine and pretending he is sophisticated, that he lives in New York, or maybe California, that he’s in college, that his world hasn’t been shattered beyond repair.

He’s never had someone else to cook _for_ though, but he’s convinced that if he only ever brings Billy chicken nuggets that Billy is going to get tired of those and then maybe tired of Steve, too. So today, Steve is making a brisket. He’s been making it since four fifteen this morning, but at least there’s like, vegetables. A nutritional benefit. Something. Still, he’s nervous. What if Billy hates it? What if he thinks it’s _stupid_ that Steve brought it? What if--

Honestly, what Steve is most afraid of is that Billy is going to realize that Steve’s visits don’t make any sense, that Steve cooking for him doesn’t make any sense, that Steve--on the whole--doesn’t make any sense and should probably stop bothering him. It’s what just about everyone else Steve has ever cared about has realized at some point or another and really, he doesn’t blame any of them. Not even his parents. His mom’s self-help books say that time alone is good for him, but how much time alone can actually be good for a person? At some point, too much of anything is bad, right?

Also, he’s going to have to do something with the knowledge that he now files Billy Hargrove--who once beat him half to death on the floor of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s home--under _people I care about_ in his head.

He’s not going to do anything about it right _now_ though, because it looks like snow, and it’s a cold morning in Hawkins, and it’s nearly Christmas and Steve is _all_ alone. 

He looks out the window while he’s doing the dishes, staring blankly out over the yard and the pool. He thinks he sees movement, but it’s just a squirrel. He sighs.

_I don’t think we’re supposed to eat this._

_My mom won’t care. They won’t even be home tonight._

_I think she’s saving it, Steve._

_Billy, come on, it’s really good. Taste just this part--the skin. Yum. It’s--_

_Steve, it’s gonna--_

_Oops._

“Shit!” Steve yells out loud as water flows over the edge of the sink and spills out onto the floor. He hadn’t been paying attention and he’d blocked the drain with something, apparently. His socks and legs are soaked, and now he has to mop, but for a second, he just shifts and leans against the counter, his head hanging between his shoulders, his eyes closed. It’s always a game with these flashes of memory that seem to consume him. He plays twenty questions with himself after, trying to assemble all the parts.

What had they been eating? A chicken, he thinks, roasted in the oven. They’d been carrying it to--somewhere. The table, maybe, and they’d been eating it as they walked, and it had--it had fallen on the floor. Steve’s mom had walked in, then. She’d been livid. She’d called Billy an _urchin_ , he thinks, and chased them both out of the house.

What if this is all made up?

How could he have _forgotten_?

Steve has spent the better part of the last few years of his life wondering and worrying that he might be crazy. A girl had died in his pool--no, not a girl, Barb--and he’d woken up screaming. Monsters turned out to be real and he’d woken up screaming. Billy Hargrove died, and he’d woken up screaming, and also remembering some fantastical story about two little boys for three years in a row, diving into waves and--apparently--dropping chickens on the floor.

Steve breathes out slowly and shakes his head a few times. It doesn’t matter, maybe, or it does. He goes into the garage to get the mop and then he goes upstairs and takes a shower. By the time he comes back down, hair done--with hair spray, thanks, El--the brisket is ready. He takes it out of the oven and sets it on the stove while he goes back upstairs to get dressed.

He hasn’t talked to anyone about Billy, not even El. She hasn’t asked, but he figures she must know that he’s visiting more. He wonders if Billy talks about him. He wonders what he says, if he’s remembered, if El is trying to get him to remember or if Steve is just fucking crazy and no one remembers except for him, because it’s made up, a lie, untrue and not real.

Steve is going to pull his hair out going in circles like this. He’s got the brisket in the car, plates, forks, knives, soda--he’s not sure what Billy has in his little concrete room, so he’s just bringing everything with him. He’s driving, but he sees the pool and it’s closed and he stops, pulls over, gets out of the car and climbs the fence. He sits in the lifeguard’s chair curled up and shivering and he smokes. He thinks about not going to see Billy. He thinks about getting back in his car and driving home and dumping the brisket in his neighbor’s trash can and crawling into bed and sleeping for a while.

He thinks about staying here, smoking, freezing, until Christmas comes or someone kicks him out, whatever comes first.

He thinks about the last time Billy had sat in this lifeguard chair, sweating, Steve hadn’t seen it, but the kids had talked to people as part of their investigation, and he’d been sweating, dazed, confused.

Scared, Steve thinks. Billy, somewhere in that body, trapped, had probably been scared.

There’s a brisket in the car and pot holders, and Steve closes his eyes, tips his head back, and blows smoke up at the sky. Maybe, he thinks, answers aren’t a way to feel better. Maybe all of this has been a huge fucking mistake. Has he ever felt better because he _knows_ more about monsters and other dimensions and death? He absolutely fucking has _not_.

He’d been fine with months of no conversation. He’d been fine with the fresh-snow silence in his mind. 

Steve lights another cigarette, flips his collar up, and sinks down lower in the chair.

~*~

The door clicks and whirrs and Billy, sitting cross legged on his new rug, wearing his new sweatpants, and reading his new book, looks up. He’d be lying if he said the quality of his life hadn’t vastly improved with Harrington’s three visits, and he isn’t just talking about the shit Harrington’s brought with him. He’s feeling a little--less empty, maybe. It’s the most he’s felt like any version of himself since he got dragged down into that warehouse, and it’s worth the panic attacks and the terror to think about being himself again.

Billy hates that hopefulness. He’d felt it in California, too, like he could see a way out of a house where he just kept bumping into doorframes or falling down stairs, whatever lie he was telling that week, and maybe his dad had sensed that. He’d made sure to kick the shit out of that hope _and_ out of Billy right after he announced _we’re moving to Indiana_ and Billy had knocked all the plates off the table to express his discontent with that plan.

He’d always courted the hurt. He’d been doing it the night that monster got him, driving off to see some married woman he wasn’t really sure what to do with. He’d been looking for something to light him up inside, but instead he’d crashed his car, and he’d died in more ways than one, but especially in the way that had counted.

The doctors here had called it a miracle, but it hadn’t felt like one at the time. Now, waiting for Harrington to show back up, sitting on the floor, holding himself upright with the power of his own core and bones and muscles and brain, he does kind of think it maybe is a miracle.

So the door whirrs, and Billy looks up, but there’s one sharp knock and then it opens. He tries not to look too disappointed.

“Hi, Billy,” the nurse says with a smile. She walks over to a station and the second nurse--they always come in pairs, like maybe they need a witness--follows her, reaching for a clipboard to take some notes. He guesses no one has ever told him that the people here are doctors and nurses in the traditional sense. Maybe they’re all doctors. Maybe they’re scientists. Maybe they’re monsters or Russians or--

The machine, the one that’s always on, starts beeping. Both the nurses or scientists or monsters turn to look at him at the same time.

Billy, sitting on the floor, wishes he were sitting on the couch so that he didn’t feel, in this moment, so much like a child. 

“Is everything all right, Billy?” one nurse says, although both of their eyes slide from him and back to the monitor.

Billy fidgets. “I just wasn’t expecting you,” he says finally. He’s not sure if that’s a lie or the truth. He’s also not sure if that even relates to what they’re asking. People here don’t tell him what the machines or tests or shots or pills or stretches are for. Mostly, he just goes along with it. He has since July. Sometimes he asks, but he never pushes. They saved his life. They’re keeping him here and it’s probably better for everyone. Who knows what he could do?

“Ah, you’re looking for Steve,” the nurse says. “When was his last visit?”

 _Bitch, you fucking know_ , Billy nearly says out loud, _I had a goddamn meltdown and you drugged me for a day and a half_.

It is the most like _himself_ he has sounded, even in his own head, in so long that he actually just stares at her wide-eyed and shocked, not by her, not by his lack of knowing, but by the sound of his own voice in his own head. 

“It’s been three days, Billy,” she says, and he wants to snarl _fuck you_ , but he doesn’t. “I think he’ll be back, anyway,” she adds, and the beeping slows, and Billy doesn’t know what it means that the machine fades back into silence.

When they leave, he gets up off the floor and sits on the couch, but he feels restless. He stands and paces and his stomach feels heavy, his chest tight and frozen, but not like he can’t breathe. His hands go to his hair, but fall. They twist together. An hour passes. Two. Three. It’s four when he looks at the clock and his mouth feels dry. It’s five. He sprawls out on his bed and realizes that what he’s feeling right now is disappointment.

God, when was the last fucking time he felt disappointed? It’s almost exciting, or it would be, if it weren’t so fucking _crushing_.

He’s halfway to asleep, still sprawled across his bed, when he hears the whirr and clank of the door. For a moment, Billy holds his breath, but then there’s one sharp knock, and he exhales hard and doesn’t move. He hopes it’s not another long test or stretch situation. He feels tired, and by tired he means sad, but admitting to disappointment was huge progress, so he’s not going to admit to feeling _sad_. Not yet, anyway. The first time Harrington had visited, Billy had started crying, but he doesn’t think that was sad, either. Just--kind of a lot, really. 

The door thumps again. “Just fucking _come in_!” Billy shouts, because they always do, those fucking thumpers, but the door is soundproofed, he knows, so they don’t hear him. He groans and rolls over onto his stomach, pressing his face into the pillow. There’s another thump and Billy sits up, staring at the door.

What if it’s not a doctor or a nurse, he thinks. What if--

The safety of this place has always been something of an illusion and he knew it, but it’s strange to think about some sort of danger at his door as maybe a reality. He looks around the room, but there’s nothing he could use as a weapon. It has never crossed his mind to wonder too deeply about why, but now--now he’s not so sure about that. About how helpless he is in here. He’s not sure he has the energy to fight someone off.

He exhales and stands up, walks to the door, yanks it open to face his fate.

His fate, it turns out, is Steve Harrington in oven mitts, holding a big pan with a stack of plates balanced precariously on top. 

“It’s _hot_ ,” Harrington says, “Billy, _move_.”

Billy moves, but slowly so that he can really emphasize his complete and utter _confusion_ about _whatever the fuck is going on here_. “I didn’t think you were gonna come back,” he hears himself saying. He wishes he weren’t saying it, but also, he’s realizing that if he never talks to Harrington ever again, he kind of wants--he kind of wants to just get to say to him what he means. Honesty won’t kill him. Lots of other things have already tried. 

Harrington hesitates, then walks in. “I thought about not coming back,” he says, and Billy takes it all back. Honesty _might_ actually kill him. He wishes Harrington had lied. “But I still have questions,” Harrington adds. “And I made you this brisket,” he holds the pot up, a little, and the plates nearly slide off. Billy steps forward and catches them, then stares at them, because he _moved forward_ and _caught them_ and that’s--that’s new. That ability. Those reflexes. He lifts his shocked eyes to meet Harrington’s. “The last time you had a plate,” Harrington says, when Billy doesn’t say anything at all, “It ended pretty badly for me.”

It’s a joke. Billy smiles, grins really, and Harrington smiles back.

They end up on the couch, Harrington scooping food onto his plate like he’s Billy’s grandma or something. He’s fussing, which Billy should hate, but doesn’t. “I wasn’t sure if you liked vegetables,” Harrington is saying, “Or meat? But I just thought it would be nice to--I dunno, all that sodium can’t be good for you. You need protein and vitamins, or something. To get your strength back.”

Billy hasn’t really thought about getting strong in--god, who fucking knows how long? Since July? Since he _died_? Maybe he is dead. Maybe this little concrete room is purgatory. He realizes, then, that he hasn’t said anything since Harrington walked in and Billy tried honesty on for size. Harrington is watching him. Billy takes a big bite--the brisket is _good_ , flavorful, melt in your mouth good. He doesn’t know how Harrington learned how to fucking _cook_ , but holy _shit_. It is the best thing Billy has maybe _ever_ tasted. 

“S’good,” Billy mumbles, his mouth full of his third bite. He’s eating like he’s never seen food before. Harrington is watching him. Billy swallows and licks his lips. He almost says _I’m glad you came back_ and he almost says _thank you_ , but instead he says, “So. Questions?” It’s Harrington’s turn to go. Billy had asked the final question before he had a fucking meltdown last time. If he’s being really honest, if their positions were switched, Billy probably wouldn’t have come back.

If he’s being really honest, if their positions were switched, Billy probably wouldn’t have come here in the first place. But Harrington did. And he came back. And back again.

Billy is stupidly grateful.

Harrington drums his finger on the table, then pops a piece of carrot into his mouth. He chews it slowly and Billy can’t stop watching his mouth. 

“What were your friends like, back in California?” Harrington asks him.

Billy thinks back on it all: late nights and loud music, sprawled on beds, out past curfew, a cool ice pack on a hot bruise held by gentle hands. A kiss so soft it nearly broke him. A promise for a future. Hands on skin. Gallons and gallons of soda. Running in the sand. Cooking together, or trying to. Homework. The ordinary and the extraordinary. The first time someone touched him, _really_ touched him. The first time he _really_ touched someone else. When he realized who he was, and is, and always would be. A kiss so bruising that he came back for more.

It all plays out like a movie behind his eyes and it ends how he knows it will: his back against the counter, plates shattered on the floor, _you want to do something about it? Do it._ A dare in his father’s voice. His own slumping shoulders. A goodbye that left him hollow, that carved him out so good that by the time they made it to Indiana he was a shell that he filled with loud music and beer and nasty comments.

What were his friends like, back in California?

What was _he_ like, he wonders. Was he something good? Did he deserve the softness and laughter and games and lightness? Did he deserve all those high tides and sunrises?

Does he still deserve them?

Will he ever have them again?

He’s been silent again, for too long. Harrington looks worried. “Sorry,” Billy says, and his voice is raw. 

Harrington shrugs, “Take your time,” he offers, and that’s almost soft, too. “Eat some more of the vegetables,” he adds, and Billy does, because it means that he won’t have to speak. He doesn’t know what to say about this or even how to say it. He’s not sure how to tell this story in a way that makes sense. He’s also not sure he wants to tell this story. He’s not sure that he wants to give all that away, not to _anyone_. Not even to Harrington.

“They were kind,” Billy says eventually. “They were kind, good people. They were--” he breaks off, swallows, shrugs. “I bet you don’t believe me.”

Again, Harrington’s face does something that Billy doesn’t understand. He tries to. He watches Harrington’s eyes and his mouth and the bob of his throat as he swallows a few times. Harrington’s always been the kind of beautiful that could make Billy stumble, but Harrington says, “I do believe you, Billy,” and it’s his voice that takes Billy’s breath away.

They stare at each other for a while. Harrington clears his throat. “Your turn,” he says.

Billy wants to say that inside him there’s an ocean and he thinks his ship is sinking and does Harrington know how to help him with that? But instead he says, “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

“I don’t really sleep anymore,” is the answer, given without meeting his eyes. Billy wonders what monsters haunt Harrington’s dreams. He wonders if he’s one of them. “My mom displays cookbooks in the kitchen. I started making shit. I--there were a lot of burned and disgusting foods, but. It turns out when you do something enough, you get good at it.”

Billy _nearly_ makes a joke about blowjobs, just to lighten the mood, but that would be showing his hand. He almost trusts Harrington enough to do it, which is probably a sign of how starved he is for humanity, but Harrington isn’t the only one listening in here and so he doesn’t say it. “Well,” he says. “It’s really good.” Billy still doesn’t say _thank you_ , but he means it. He hopes that Harrington knows.

Harrington looks pleased, flushes, and Billy figures that he must know what Billy means.

“Oh,” Harrington says. “It’s my turn,” and he seems to cast around for a good question to ask. Billy thinks it’ll be about California again. All of Harrington’s questions have been. Instead he says, “What’s the kindest thing you’ve ever done?” and Billy nearly laughs in his face.

“C’mon, Harrington,” he says instead. “You’ve met me, right? I’m--”

“Not a monster,” Harrington says. “A person. A complicated, _dick_ of a person, but still. You must’ve done something kind.”

Billy tries not to remember the person he was before he came to Hawkins. He tries to bundle all those years of being someone half decent, half normal, half fun into a little ball and store them behind a locked gate, but Harrington is asking him to remember, and he brought Billy food, and he keeps visiting, but maybe only because he has questions, and Billy is afraid that if he stops answering, maybe Harrington won’t come back.

“I taught Max how to drive,” Billy says. He almost never says her name out loud. “Sometimes we needed to get out of the house. Her bike broke right before we moved and I--I wasn’t really driving, then.” Hard to, with a half-broken ankle and an eye swollen shut. Those last few weeks had been _miserable_. “So I taught her how to drive because she was afraid of being stuck in the house and I wanted her to know she wasn’t ever going to be. That there was always a way out for her.”

For her, but not for him. Never for him. They’d fought the last day in California because Max hadn’t wanted to go, and all those weeks of her driving him around even though she shouldn’t have, all of them had melted away, because his dad said _if you want someone to blame, blame him, now get your ass in the car_.

And despite those weeks of ice creams and sunburns and trying to catch as much of California in their fingers as they could, Max had climbed into that car with his dad and with Susan and by the time they all got to Indiana, she’d blamed Billy, just like his dad had told her to do. Then everyone had hated him, but not nearly as much as he hated himself. By then, he’d been totally hollowed out.

Maybe that’s why he’d had so much room for that monster.

Billy doesn’t want to dwell and Harrington looks like he wants to know more, so he asks, quickly, “Have you ever seen the ocean?” because there isn’t one in Indiana and not for goddamn miles and miles and miles. It’s been torturing Billy since he got here.

“Yes,” Harrington says. He looks hesitant, now, like he’s nervous to say more. “When I was younger. My family went away for a week each year. I had a friend there. He taught me how to surf, kind of,” Harrington is looking at his lap, fidgeting. “I’d forgotten about him until recently,” Harrington adds. “Dunno why. Growing up, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if he remembers me.”

It sounds a little like a love story, but Billy doesn’t say that. “Probably does,” Billy says. “Maybe you should bring him some of this brisket. You’re hard to forget.”

Harrington’s face, again, is hard to read, but after several long heartbeats, he smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

He leaves not long after that. When Billy goes to bed that night, his room smells like home-cooked food and he dreams of standing waist-deep in the water, holding someone’s hands as they try to balance on a surfboard.

It makes sense, probably. He’s not living his own life or his own memories anymore. It makes sense that he’d be stealing Harrington’s. Billy wakes up the next morning and if he thinks about those dreams at all, it’s only a little bit, and only in passing.


	5. December 11th, 12th, 13th

December 11th:

Steve wakes up drenched in sweat and fumbles for his watch, which tells him it’s a little after four in the morning. Maybe this is just the time he’s going to wake up now. He rolls over onto his back and sprawls out, breathing unsteadily, raggedly, and trying to figure out why. The obvious answer is that he had a nightmare, although it’s less obvious what the nightmare was about. He doesn’t remember, can’t remember, and as he finally sits up and scrubs both hands through his hair, pushing it off his forehead, he thinks, well, fuck. It’s not like he can remember much of _anything_ these days, so.

The house is lonely this early in the morning. Downstairs, in a t-shirt and sweatpants, Steve is aware of every sound and bump in the house. He’d asked Nancy, once, if she was still jumpy and she’d said yes, but that Jonathan helps. Steve is happy for her in a real and deep way, but her partnership makes his loneliness more obvious. He hasn’t asked Robin, but maybe he should. She’s been a good friend to him in all of this, but she has a life, and people, and he has his kitchen, empty and dark and filled with noises that make him tense.

He watches the coffee brew, both elbows on the counter, bent at the waist, his chin cradled in his palms. _Drip, drip, drip_. He pours it into a mug, adds milk and sugar, stirs it slowly and for way too long just because it’s something to do. He goes and sits in the living room by the fireplace and thinks about turning it on. Maybe it would chase the chill out of the air, but he’d have to go get wood, and find matches, and he’s already sitting down on the floor.

He’d turned lights on as he moved through the house. He’s gotten better, lately, about sleeping with them off, but he can’t handle being awake in a dark house, so they go on one by one as he moves through it. Sometimes he feels like a ghost. Sometimes he wants to walk next door and ask the neighbors if they can see him.

They’d probably call the cops, and thinking about cops makes Steve sad, so he stops thinking about the neighbors, which doesn’t really help, but if he pretends it does long enough he’ll probably feel something else instead.

It’s just that he’s so fucking lonely.

He could call people and they would be here, but they would need him to ask, and really what he craves is someone who _knows_ to be there. All of them would come if he asked and he knows that. He has people who love him, but not the most. What he wants is someone who loves him fiercely, who knows when he needs them. He’s not sure anyone has a love like that, but what he wants is a soft landing when he’s careening like he is. He wants someplace that can just feel safe. Someone who _knows_.

_Hey_.

_Hi._

_What’s wrong?_

_Nothing._

_Something._

_My mom is mad at me._

_Because we dropped her chicken?_

_Yeah. No. She says I need better friends._

_I’m not a good friend?_

_You’re the best friend, Billy._

_Oh. Did you tell her that?_

_Yeah._

_So?_

_She said you’re not our type of people._

_What does that mean?_

_I dunno._

_Do you still want to be friends?_

_Yeah._

_Are you okay?_

_No._

_Can I sit with you?_

_Steve?_

_Can I sit with you?_

_I’m just gonna do it._

When Steve opens his eyes, he’s on the verge of tears. He gets up, fixes coffee again, and then walks outside and gets in his car. He’s not even sure anyone will be at this fucking facility where they keep Billy. It’s barely even _daytime_ yet, but when he rings the doorbell, it opens. The doctor is there. He looks a little sleepy, maybe, but not surprised.

“He’s asleep,” the doctor says. “He’s had a bad two days.” He says that as though Steve should know what he means. He doesn’t and he’s afraid to ask. There’s a strange silence between them. Steve wonders what the doctor is thinking about and why he was awake. He’s going to ask, but the doctor speaks first, sounding a whole lot like a man who isn’t sure what to do next. “I’ll take you to see him,” the doctor says and then they’re walking down the hallway. The door unlocks with that same sound. Whirr. Clank. Steve flinches, but he’s not sure why. Billy shouldn’t be trapped, he thinks. He wonders why he hasn’t thought that before. The doctor knocks once, then pushes the door open. Privacy be damned, apparently.

Billy is not asleep. He’s sitting up in bed. He’s got both hands behind his head, curled with his face pressed into his knees. “I said leave me the fuck _alone_!” he half-yells, then coughs, but he doesn’t look up. “I don’t _want_ your fucking _drugs_.”

Steve looks at the doctor and the doctor looks back at him and then they both look at Billy. Steve walks in and sets the coffee down. The door shuts and he sits on the side of Billy’s bed. Billy goes absolutely fucking still.

Finally, Billy looks up. He looks wretched and Steve falters, uncertain and unsteady on uncharted seas. “Hi,” he says. “Can I sit with you?” Billy doesn’t say anything, but Steve didn’t either, all those years ago. He wonders if they’re memories or prophecies. Maybe El’s doing it. Maybe they aren’t real at all. Steve swallows hard. He reaches out and wraps an arm around Billy’s shoulders. Billy is tense on the bed, rigid. “Can I sit with you?” Steve says again. Billy doesn’t move. He doesn’t even seem to breathe. “I’m just gonna do it,” Steve says after a few more seconds.

Billy collapses into him. “It’s okay,” Steve hears himself saying. “I’m gonna sit with you. It’s okay.”

~*~

December 12th:

Harrington had stayed for hours the day before, until the afternoon came and Billy finally stopped saying he didn’t want the drugs. He’d wanted to sleep, and he’d needed the drugs to do it, but Harrington had stayed, sitting in bed with him as Billy finally settled down thanks to a needle in his arm. Harrington had stayed, Billy’s nose pressed against his hip, until Billy had drifted off into those dark, soothing waves of sleep. When Billy had woken up this morning, he’d been alone.

That’s okay, probably. Billy hasn’t had an episode like that in a while, but the morning after Harrington and his brisket had left, Billy seemed to fall apart. He couldn’t think of anything but their faces and voices. His victims. He’d been restless, pacing, then yelling. He’d smacked three trays of food out of the arms of nurses and doctors and eventually security. They’d stopped coming. He’d spent twenty four hours alone in his head and by the time they must have realized it was a bad idea to leave him alone with himself, it had been too late.

There had been crying. Yelling. He’d thrown books all over the room. He’d dragged himself into bed, then into the bathroom, and he’d thrown up and cried some more. He’d showered--like that would help--and eventually he’d crawled into bed, where he’d stayed, yelling any time someone tried to come into the room until Harrington showed up and said _I’m just gonna do it_ and put his arm around Billy’s shoulders and stayed.

This morning, Billy’s doing his level best to play the docile patient. He’d eaten breakfast when a nurse brought it and now he’s sitting and reading quietly. He’s not sure why. Maybe he’s scared of himself. The last few days have been scary. He doesn’t like to feel quite so unhinged, but Harrington had been there even though it was like five in the morning and he shouldn’t have been, and Billy is so grateful, and it had been a scary few days, but there’s something scarier.

What if Harrington doesn’t come back?

Billy isn’t sure that he himself would come back, honestly. He wouldn’t blame Harrington and yet god, he fucking hopes that Harrington _will_ come back. He needs him to. He--he needs _Harrington_.

Jesus Christ. If the Billy of that blustery October could _hear himself_ _now_.

Billy would tell that version of himself to run, that there are worse monsters out there than the one under his roof, but then that might be a lie. Even now, Billy’s sure that the deeper, colder fear is for the human monster who’d called him _son_ like it was curse and not the monster from another dimension that lived inside his fucking head. 

And anyway, his dad still lives inside his head.

So really what Billy means is that today, here and now, if he were a little bit less selfish, he would be telling Harrington to run. 

He’s relieved when the door clanks and whirrs. He’s relieved by the feather-light knock on the door because there’s only one person who knocks like that. It’s the person who Billy most wants to see, lately. It’s been less than a month of these visits and Billy cannot imagine a world in which he stops getting them. That should be a red flag, a warning sign. Billy should know better than to _want_.

“Two visits in two days,” Billy says as he pulls the door open. Like yesterday, Harrington has come comfortable in sweatpants and a hoodie. “You must really be worried about me.”

“If I say I am, will you slam that door shut in my face?” Harrington asks. “Why do I always gotta say this? _Move_. I come with gifts.”

And that’s true enough. Billy steps out of the way and holds the door open as Harrington wheels a--a _cart_ in. “What the fuck is all of this?” Billy asks. It’s nice to feel a little like himself again after the last few days. That is, even if it doesn’t come on a cart, the best gift that Harrington can give him. Keeps giving him. Every time. 

“This is a television,” Steve says. “And this--” he motions, “Is called an NES? I dunno. Dustin helped me pick it out. He says it’s the coolest thing ever and that this new game is the coolest thing ever, also. So.” Harrington motions at Billy. “You wanna play?”

The first thing they need to do is find an outlet and then they have to figure out how to hook everything up, how to get started. It takes teamwork and even if they never got the thing working, Billy thinks that might be enough, the way they’re laughing and lifting shit up, bending over each other to try and plug everything into the right spot.

They sit on the floor in the corner because that’s where they can get it plugged in. Their shoulders are pressed together and Billy’s got the controller and he has _no idea_ what he’s doing, but he’s laughing, and Harrington is laughing, and it’s a really nice day. If they weren’t in a concrete room, if they weren’t in a bunker, maybe it would feel normal. Billy closes his eyes and imagines that this is what kids all over America are doing right now. Hanging out with their friends. Playing video games. Not murdering people. He exhales slowly.

“Billy?” Harrington asks, his voice soft. “Are you tired? We can stop if you want to rest.”

“No,” Billy says after a second. “No. I think I’m finally figuring this out. I’m--I’m good,” and he offers Harrington a smile and Harrington offers one back, and if Billy were smart he might think _oh no_ , but he isn’t smart, so he doesn’t think that at all.

In fact, and not for the first time, he thinks _thank you_.

Maybe that’s the best part or the worst part. Billy doesn’t know. What he does know is that he gives Harrington shit about not bringing him any food and then Harrington leaves and _comes back_ with pasta that he made at home just because he thinks Billy could stand to eat a few carbs, and even though it had scared Billy when Harrington left again, it makes him feel so much fucking better when he returns.

And that night, lying in bed, listening to the machines turn on and beep and hum, Billy starts to wonder, to _really wonder_ , why the fuck he is still in this little concrete room and if they’re ever going to let him out of it.

~

December 13th:

Steve is hoping he’s not pushing Billy’s patience or the patience of the doctors by coming back three days in a row, but he’s so fucking tired of the house feeling empty. He can’t imagine staying home. He should go see Dustin, probably, or call his parents. Robin said something about getting lunch, but he doesn’t have a job and he doesn’t have anyone who really wants him around, not for real, and so for the third day in a row, Steve heads out to Billy’s bunker.

He’s got McDonald’s with him today. He woke up late and didn’t have time to cook, really, and he figures Billy will like this just as much as he’d liked anything else that Steve had to offer. He might even like it more.

Steve’s spent the last two days caught up in a whirlwind of _BillyBillyBilly_. There’s a part of him that knows that’s not healthy. It reminds him a little bit of his early days with Nancy, back when Tommy and Carol were giving him a hard time, being dicks about everything, and he was so in love. He had been, too. He’d been so in love with her, with everything about her, had wanted so badly and so deeply to be what she needed.

It’s a strange comparison, Billy and Nancy, because they’re two different people and Billy is--Billy. He’s a dick who beat Steve’s face in that one time and probably would have again, but he was also a friend, once, probably, unless El is fucking with Steve’s head, and that person--that _friend_ \--had been good. He’d been so good.

_Do you ever think about running away_?

Steve had been ten when Billy asked him that. It was the last time he’d been in California.

_Yeah_. _Sure. I don’t think my parents would notice._

_I think my mom is gonna run away._

_What? Moms don’t do that._

_I think it’s my fault._

_What? Moms don’t--_

_Steve, are you with--it’s that boy again, I told you he’d be with him. Get away, get away. We have got to stop coming here, dear. The locals are just trash. Look who your son is spending all his time with! No wonder he’s such a--_

_Mom, stop!_

_Steve, do not talk to me that way. Get away from that boy._

_But he’s my friend--_

_We’ve been over this. I said come on._

_Ow, mom, you’re hurting my arm!_

And then Billy’s voice, frantic and angry all at once: _Stop hurting him! I said stop! Hey! Stop!_

Behind him, someone leans on the horn, hard. Steve is frozen, staring straight ahead and the light is green and his hands are shaking.

When he gets there, when he’s parked, Steve spends a few minutes just sitting in his car and breathing. Then he rings the doorbell, walks down the hall, Billy’s door whirrs and clanks and Steve knocks, it opens.

It’s two days out from the morning Steve had found Billy shattering right in front of his eyes and Billy’s looking only a little better. He’s got dark circles under his eyes. His hair is growing out unevenly--it needs a trim. Billy looks exhausted and subdued. He moves out of the way before Steve can tell him to and the door shuts. Steve hands over the McDonald’s and then drops down to sit on Billy’s battered couch.

The TV is gone. “Hey, where’d--”

“They said they’ll bring it back when you’re here if we want to play it.” Billy isn’t really looking at him. “They said I shouldn’t have it when I’m alone.”

Steve opens his mouth to say something, but he’s not sure what he would say besides _that’s really fucked up_ and he’s aware that they’re being listened to. He wonders why. He wonders where they took the TV and the NES. He wonders if they’re playing it right now. Assholes.

“Well,” Steve mutters. He reaches out and takes a fry. “Should we do questions?”

“Yeah,” Billy says. He seems to hesitate. “Can I go first?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He allows a beat of pause, then grins. “Great, now my turn--”

“Hey--” Billy reaches out and punches him in the shoulder, which is really the only reason Steve had done that. “Dick,” Billy says, but they’re both grinning. Steve’s glad to know that Billy can still grin. 

“How are you?” Billy asks.

Steve falters. There are so many answers to that question. They’re layered. Hard. Intense. He bites down on his lower lip. “I’m all right,” he settles on. “I’m--” he hesitates. “I’ve been feeling really lonely lately. You’ve helped, so. Thanks for letting me come to your creepy concrete bunker, or whatever.” _Cage_ , Steve had wanted to say, but hadn’t. This room, even with the rug and couch and bed and pillows, it’s still a sort of cage.

Billy’s smile goes a little soft around the edges, which is something that Steve’s getting used to. The smile he remembers on Billy’s face was sharp and mean and calculated. He doesn’t remember the smile of that little boy back in California. He really only remembers the eyes and the curls, blond and messy. “Your turn,” Billy says.

Steve should ask an easy question, but he says, “What happened to your mom?” and gets to watch Billy’s face shutter so quickly and absolutely that it nearly knocks Steve over.

“Ask something else,” Billy says, his voice is hard and he’s not looking at Steve again. Steve nearly pushes, but he thinks that if he does, it’ll--be a problem. He’s not ready to lose Billy and whatever this is, so he nods and looks around the room. 

The idea comes to him all at once and in the voice of that child-Billy, the one Steve is sure is real, but maybe isn’t.

He stands up and walks to grab Billy’s copy of _The Outsiders_. He finds a pencil on a clipboard that the nurses must use.

He walks back over to the couch and sits down. Billy looks at him, curious, an eyebrow raised, a little hesitant, like maybe Steve is going to ask another question that makes his face shutter.

“What’s your favorite kind of weather?” Steve says. _Do you ever think about running away_? he writes down, then hands the book to Billy.

“I like the sun,” Billy says, staring down at the book, unmoving. Steve pushes the pencil into his hand. _Yes_ , Billy writes, his eyes flickering up. “Do you remember your dreams?” he asks. _When_? He writes, then hands the book to Steve again. 

For a long second, Steve stares down at it. He swallows hard. “I remember every single one,” Steve says, his voice raw and very quiet. _Two days. The 15th. I’ll be back then_.

He hands the book back to Billy, who closes it and holds it in his lap, unmoving and silent for a long, long time.


	6. December 14th & 15th

December 14th

The day before they’re going to make a break for it, Steve spends a lot of time cleaning the house and decorating. He hadn’t put anything up for the holidays, too caught up, maybe, in everything with Billy. Usually, he would. Usually he likes to deck the halls or whatever it’s called, because the lights make him feel less lonely and they’re the kind of lights you can leave on all night. 

He doesn’t really have a decorating plan, or anything, but he sticks to crisp white in his garlands and softer strings of white around the tree he picks up at eight in the morning when the little shop at the edge of town finally opens. He’d stood out there for an hour, staring at the kid in the shop through the closed gate.

“I’m already here!” Steve kept calling. “Can you just let me in?” and the kid had kept jabbing at the sign on the door _We Open at 8!_ It said in cheery lights. Steve had sat on his hood and smoked, staring moodily ahead, nervous about timing, nervous about _everything_ , until he’d finally had a Christmas tree strapped to the top of his car.

The reason he likes the white lights is because those multi-colored strings remind him of the first time he knew that monsters were real and that isn’t a night he particularly likes to relive. He’d been so ready to play the hero, his face fucked up from Jonathan’s fists, and then it had been the two of them, and him, and a bat, and those fucking flashing lights in Joyce’s house.

Sometimes he daydreams about a time when he’ll feel at peace with all this shit and hang a string of colored lights, maybe in remembrance or memorial or something, because it’s all over.

But then he remembers that the reason he’s daydreaming is because he almost never sleeps and he stops wondering about peace. He doesn’t think, if he’s honest, that there will ever really be _peace_ and--

And anyway, he’s decorating the house for Billy because tomorrow he’s breaking him out of that place.

He’s not stupid. He’s sure they’ll find them. Billy has had all of two visitors and only one of them is maybe obsessed with him. There’s a snow storm in the forecast, though, and Steve’s timed it out to risk bad roads. He wants to buy them time. He doesn’t think that this will be forever, it’s not a solution, but it is a break. Both of them need it. Billy needs to see the sun and the sky and the world outside and Steve--Steve is so tired of his empty goddamn house.

It’s just a break. He’s not going to try and leave the state with Billy, or anything. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday. When did Steve start daydreaming about _someday_ and when did it start including Billy Hargrove? Before all of this, he used to have that dream for himself and Nancy or himself and some other girl, but now when he thinks about it, it’s Billy. It’s _always_ Billy.

Which is stupid, really, so maybe he _is_ stupid, because Billy lives in a little concrete bunker and Steve does not. Steve lives out here and alone in this big empty house with the shadows and corners he always needs to check before he goes to bed. Billy is not his future. He’s barely even his present. All of this started because on the worst day of his life--and there was some heavy competition for it--he’d remembered that he knew Billy Hargrove a long time ago.

_What if you run away?_

_What?_

_Before your mom does. You could just run instead._

_Don’t be dumb. It’s not--that’s not--no._

_Billy, c’mon. You could fit in my suitcase. We’d go back to my house and you’d be safe!_

Safe. Why had Steve said that all those years ago? Those early memories were dotted with joy and laughter, playing on the beach, the kind of stupid shit he’d wanted to figure out because it meant there was a time when he’d been whole and likeable, before he’d been cool, before he’d fallen from grace, before monsters. He’s been chasing this idea that he knew Billy Hargrove, sure, but also that Billy Hargrove knew him.

Lately, though, the memories haven’t felt so easy. Billy’s mom leaving has come up a lot, just snatches of conversation. Steve never really remembers where they were or what they looked like. He can’t conjure up the expression on Billy’s face or even his eyes. Just his voice, childish and unsteady, often irritated by Steve’s questions. Some shit doesn’t change, Steve guesses. But why had he said _safe_?

He claws at the edges of his memory, steadies his breathing, closes his eyes, but nothing else comes. The memories never come like that, when he wants them to. They hit him so hard they leave him breathless, frozen at stop lights and in conversation.

Robin had called after he got home the day before and mentioned she hadn’t seen him in a while. Dustin had called, too. Steve thinks about them as he hangs ornaments on the tree. Both had sounded worried and he wants to tell them not to be. For the first time in months, he has an actual fucking purpose. He’s got something to _do_. He’s not ignoring them because he’s sitting alone in his house with all the lights on. He’s decorating the tree! He’s going to have a guest!

The last time he’d broken into a secret government facility it hadn’t gone well. He touches his lip, his eye, remembers how badly it had hurt to be hit like that, but this isn’t breaking in, so--it’s probably going to be fine.

Lying in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, alone with all the lights on, Steve wonders if maybe he’s _not_ okay. 

He rolls onto his side and stares at his clock, watches 11:59pm roll over to 12:00am.

He breathes out slowly. Whether or not he’s okay doesn’t matter, anymore. It’s been two days.

It’s December 15th.

~

December 15th:

Waiting for Harrington makes Billy wish he were doing something easier, like maybe using tweezers to pluck out every single one of his eyebrows. It’s been four days since the 11th, since he’d had his fucking two day meltdown, and he’s still tired from it. He’s pretty sure he still looks tired from it, too, if how gentle the nurses and doctors have been is anything to go by. He doesn’t have the energy to be a dick or to ask questions when they take his blood or run him through some different tests, and so they’re kind to him. _Poor kid_ , he imagines them saying, and then he imagines them all laughing, because he’s not a kid, he’s a monster, and no one feels fucking _bad_ for monsters. 

He’s excited.

It takes him most of the morning to realize that’s what he’s feeling. He’s _excited_. He can’t stop thinking about what the sky might look like, if there will be clouds. He wonders if he’ll see the moon. He wonders what the air will smell like and if there will be Christmas lights up, or people having big parties. He wonders what he’s going to do about the cold, and he wonders if Harrington is going to regret this, wanting to spend time with him, wanting to spend more than a few hours with Billy. Is he even likeable outside this concrete room?

He should be frightened, maybe. He should feel unsteady and uncertain about what the world will mean, but Billy has an ocean inside him and for the first time in months it feels like waves lapping at the shore, rather than currents trying to drag him down. The sea inside him is so often a riptide, unexpected, violent, destructive, and cruel. Today it is still and calm, almost beautiful.

He’s trying his hardest not to walk to the clock every thirty seconds. He’s waiting for Harrington, had gotten up early and eaten his breakfast, had done his best to seem his normal combination of moody and pliant and rude, but it’s hard to know if he’s doing it right. Billy has never been an actor, so who fucking knows. Maybe they’ll all know something is up.

Except he _is_ looking at the clock and his stomach starts to sink as the day gets later and later and later. There’s no sign of Harrington. He must look disappointed. A nurse brings him a soda--they do that only _rarely_ \--and tells him he’s going to start feeling better, soon. He must really still look terrible from the fit he’d had the other day.

Maybe that’s what scared Harrington away. Maybe he’d seen how Billy had acted that day, how he’d been freaking out, and maybe he’d seen how Billy had looked the two days after, and maybe he’d realized that he didn’t _want_ to be responsible for someone like that, who looks like that, who _acts_ like that, and maybe--

Whirr.

Clank.

Billy exhales only when he hears those soft knocks, sagging back onto the couch for a second before he gets up to open the door.

The sight of Harrington nearly takes Billy’s breath away. He’s rosy-cheeked--it must be cold outside--in a jacket and snow boots. Billy thinks he might not even mind the cold, now. He’d bitched about it so much at first, but it’s weather and it’s _outside_. He takes a breath and then he takes Harrington in. He’s got a bag under one arm. Billy falters a little. “McDonald’s,” Harrington says, “Move, Billy,” and Billy does, even though he’s confused. He’d thought--

Harrington hands him a napkin. _Act normal_. Billy stares at it for a second, then looks up and nods. “Questions?” he asks, motioning for them to sit on the couch. Harrington’s hand is on his shoulder, he nudges Billy to move first. It takes Billy a second, once they’re both on the couch, to realize that he hadn’t heard the door lock.

It can’t possibly be that easy, can it?

“What do you like to listen to on your radio?” Harrington asks him.

Billy stares. “Whatever is loudest,” he says.

“Oh, so probably not--” Harrington reaches out and turns the radio on. It’s a pop station. “Well, I can _make_ it loud,” Harrington says, and then he turns it up. “You want to dance?” and Billy doesn’t really know the song.

_I was feeling cold and tired_ , someone sings. There’s a good base line. _Yeah, kind of sad and uninspired_.

Billy thinks he recognizes the voice, but he can’t think of the name of the group. He chews his lip. “Dance?” he says.

“Yeah,” Harrington turns the radio up louder, so loud that Billy can barely hear him when he says, “Enough talking. Let’s dance.”

And then Billy gets it. “Okay,” he says. “I haven’t. In a while.”

“That’s fine,” Harrington says, but neither of them are dancing. They’re standing up and the radio keeps going, _but when it almost seemed too much_ , and Harrington is stripping out of his coat and handing it to Billy. He tugs it on and it smells good, like cologne and cigarettes, like Harrington’s shampoo, maybe, _I see your face and feel the magic in your touch_.

Harrington steps in close enough that when he talks, Billy can feel his breath on his ear. He shivers. “Do you have shoes?” he asks.

Billy pauses and looks around the room as the chorus gets loud, says _lay your hands on me_. He definitely does not have shoes. He’s never thought about that before.

“It’s fine,” Harrington whispers, and then he’s kicking off the snow boots. “Billy,” he says loudly, “Get ready for _this_ move.”

Billy pulls the snow boots on, “Big feet,” he whispers, grinning. Harrington meets his eyes. Billy feels exhilarated. This is crazy. What are they _doing?_

Harrington winks at him and the song says _back and forth across the sea_ and then Harrington is grabbing his hand, and he’s in _socks_ and no _coat_ because Billy is wearing all his stuff, and he’s pulling Billy toward the door and they’re stepping out into the hall, and the radio sings _I have chased so many dreams_ , _but I have never felt the grace that I have felt in your embrace_.

Harrington squeezes his hand.

And then they make a run for it.

~*~

“I really thought that would be harder,” Steve says once they’re back in town. He’s been checking in the rearview mirror every ten or so seconds, but no one had followed them or chased them in a van or anything, and the roads really are terrible. It’s coming down hard. Steve is feeling a little nervous, honestly, about making it the rest of the way home, once they’re off the main roads.

Billy hasn’t said much since they stomped through the two inches already on the ground and dove into his BMW. He hadn’t peeled out of the parking lot and down that little dirt road so much as he had _slid_ down it. The whole time, Billy had been quiet and wide eyed, staring at Steve sometimes, and also peering through the back window, and then, eventually, glued to his own window, not talking, just staring at Hawkins as it became less trees and more town center.

Now, Billy turns to look back at him. It’s a different kind of light to see him in, so different from that cold little room. His cheeks are flushed and he’s bright-eyed, happy, maybe. It’s dark out and snowing hard, and Steve has to fight himself to bring his eyes back to the road instead of just staring at Billy the whole goddamn way home. If he doesn’t focus now, they’re fucked. If they drive off the road and someone calls the cops--

Well. Billy is supposed to be _dead_ , so.

“I’ve never broken a rule,” Billy says. “I don’t even think they guess I’d ever want to leave.”

Steve glances at him and then back at the roads. They’re nearly through town, now. Soon it’ll be back roads. He’s just praying they don’t get stuck. “Did you?” Steve asks. “Want to leave, I mean? I should’ve--sorry--”

“I did,” Billy says, but it’s so quiet Steve nearly doesn’t hear him. “This is--this is exactly right. I did want to leave,” and then he falls silent except for these little, surprised noises he keeps making. It takes Steve another mile to figure out what Billy’s seeing that’s making him so fucking delighted. It’s the lights. He’s seeing the Christmas lights in the snow that people in Hawkins have up.

That warms Steve. He feels like he made the right choice, decorating everything yesterday. 

They don’t talk much. Steve had worried that a silence would be awkward, but it’s comfortable. Billy’s taking the world in, probably, and Steve doesn’t blame him for that, and Steve is focusing on the road. There are a few near misses, but eventually Steve is parked in front of his house. He hadn’t done too much with the outside--some lights around the door, a wreath in the window, but Billy already looks floored.

“I’d forgotten how fucking nice your house is,” Billy says. 

Steve looks at it, trying to see it through Billy’s eyes. It’s big, he agrees. It’s fancy. Inside, though, it’s empty and so often cold. Barb died out back. Steve has trouble thinking of his house as anything other than haunted. 

“C’mon, let’s go inside,” Steve says, and then they’re making their way through the snow. “Shit,” Steve mutters. “I think we’re lucky we made it here. I planned for a snow storm, but this is kind of wild.”

Billy nods. “It’s pretty,” he says. “I like how quiet it is.”

They’re almost to the door, but both of them pause and listen. It is quiet, but not in a scary way. It’s soothing. When Steve looks at Billy, his eyes are shut, his face tipped up. There are snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. He’s got himself wrapped tight in Steve’s coat. Even though his feet are freezing, even though they’re wet, Steve lingers with Billy in that pause, both of them listening. He wonders what Billy’s thinking about with his eyes closed like that. He wonders if Billy knows that the only thing Steve’s thinking about is him.

Eventually, Steve reaches out and presses his hand against the small of Billy’s back. “C’mon,” Steve says, his voice soft. “We should get inside.”

Steve unlocks the door and they both fall through it, laughing, but he can’t figure out why. He strips off his socks and hops around, curling his toes and rubbing his arms while Billy gets out of the boots and hangs up Steve’s coat. “I need to change,” Steve says, grinning at Billy, who is here in his house, just the two of them. “And then we can have dinner?”

He’s got Billy’s hand in his, again, suddenly. He doesn’t know how it happened. He thinks he was reaching out to take the coat, but Billy had hung it up, and now they’re holding hands. Billy’s fingers are freezing. They lock eyes, for a second. 

“Is it McDonald’s?” Billy asks, cutting the silence, but Steve can tell by his grin that he’s teasing. “Because we left that in my bunker.” 

Billy lets go first.

Steve rolls his eyes. “I worked so hard in the kitchen all day and he wants _McDonald’s_ ,” Steve says, playing along, and then he motions with his head so that they can go upstairs. “I just need to change,” Steve says, but Billy has stopped, wide-eyed, outside the bathroom. “Billy?” Steve asks.

“Harrington,” Billy says slowly. “Can I take a shower?”

Steve blinks at him. “Uh, sure?”

Billy flushes. “It’s just. You have a nice shower? My bunker. It. Doesn’t.”

Steve wishes he could do something with his expression that isn’t looking _impossibly fond_ , but he knows that is probably the only way his smile could be described. “For sure,” he says. “Go ahead. I’ll bring you some clean clothes and leave them outside the door, all right?”

While Billy showers, Steve changes. He towel dries and styles his snow-damp hair in the mirror. When he’s comfortable in a big sweater and a pair of sweats, he grabs clothes for Billy, which he leaves outside the door of the bathroom before he heads downstairs. If all goes according to plan, the house will smell like bread and like home by the time that Billy gets down here.

Steve’s not sure how long they have, maybe just one night, maybe even less. He puts the loaf of bread in the oven and starts the sauce simmering on the stove, stirring idly. He looks outside, past the Christmas lights, past the pool, out to the trees and prays that the snow can give them enough time to--to--

To catch their breath, Steve realizes, looking back down at the sauce. They both just need a few minutes to breathe.


	7. December 15th, still

December 15th, still.

“There are a lot of colors happening on your sweater,” Billy says when he walks into the kitchen. It’s true, Harrington’s sweater _looks_ black, but it has all these shapes, and all sorts of colors on it. It’s not what Billy had expected, although he’s not sure why not. Maybe he’s thinking about the pea coat or the clothes that Harrington brought over, all dark and casual and expensive. The sweater is probably also expensive _and_ it’s ridiculous. It looks good on Harrington, Billy thinks. It looks--well. It looks _authentic_.

Like, maybe it’s a sweater that Harrington really likes. Like it’s a sweater he feels at home in.

Billy is writing poetry in his head about Harrington’s sweater, now, so he probably needs something fucking else to do with his brain.

“Ass,” Harrington says.

“I didn’t say I don’t like it,” Billy responds. He cuts across the kitchen to stand next to Harrington on the stove. Something smells good in the oven. There’s something heating in the pan. Billy reaches down and swipes his finger through it.

“ _Hey_ \--” Harrington says. “There’s a spoon _right there_. That’s _hot_. You could--”

Billy grins at Harrington as he licks the sauce off his finger and Harrington shuts up. “This is good,” Billy says. “It all smells really fucking good.”

Aside from Harrington’s visits when he’s cooked and Jane’s McDonald’s, Billy has spent most of the last--he counts in his head--five months eating a worse version of hospital food. For a while, at first, it had been liquids. He wasn’t in a place for eating, really. Billy doesn’t think much about all of July and most of August, but things had been fucking rough. After, at first, he’d thought it was frozen meals, but Billy’s had a lot of frozen meals in his life and none of them--not _one_ \--tasted as fucking bland as whatever they feed him does.

“There’s bread in the oven,” Harrington says. For a second, he sounds almost shy, but the expression he pins Billy with looks downright fucking _bitchy_. “That’s what you’re _supposed_ to use if you want to dip something in the sauce. _Ass_ ,” but Harrington’s grinning when he turns away. Billy can see it at the corner of his mouth, so he reaches out and swipes his finger through the sauce again and makes sure it’s _noisy_ when he sucks the sauce off.

This, Billy thinks, as he drifts away from the stove once Harrington pushes him off, this is what normal feels like. The kitchen smells like food and outside it’s snowing. It’s warm and Harrington is teasing him, and Billy is teasing him back. Is this what Hawkins would have been like, Billy wonders, if he hadn’t already been half broken when he got here?

_And no funny business_ , that’s what his dad had said to him that first day of school, _none of that shit you were doing in California. We’re a respectable family in a respectable town_.

The school had called his dad that day about Billy’s smoking and his loud music. There had been a capital C Conversation when Max and Susan went to bed. Absentmindedly, Billy touches his back. Very respectable, he thinks, a little bitter.

“Billy?”

Harrington’s voice makes him jump. He’d drifted to the window, staring out into the snow. “Mmm?” Billy says.

He knows Harrington is coming up behind him because he can see his reflection in the window. It still makes him jump, again, when Harrington touches his shoulder. “You good?”

“When I first saw it,” Billy says, “When it first looked like me. We were in this weird place. It was snowing. Everything was shadows. It was--I thought it wasn’t real, but then--then I thought I wasn’t real.”

“It wasn’t snow,” Harrington says. “I don’t know what it is, but. It’s not snow.”

Billy’s throat feels a little raw, all of the sudden, aches like it might right before he starts to cry. He’s gone and ruined this normal already with talk of nightmares and shadows and a place where not-snow falls from the sky. _You ruin everything_ , his dad had told him once, twice, a hundred thousand times. _I know_ , Billy always wanted to sneer. _I get it. I know_ , but he’d always been afraid to admit it out loud. He doesn’t say anything.

Harrington’s thumb slides back and forth along Billy’s shoulder. “Go sit,” he says. “I’ll bring the food out, all right?” and he squeezes again, but when he heads back to the stove, Billy follows him. He doesn’t want to be far away, he realizes, so he leans his elbows on the counter, pulling vegetables into his mouth whenever he’s sure Harrington is watching, then grinning at him innocently. 

By the time they’re sitting down, Billy is starting to feel better again. They’re on the couch. Harrington has pulled the coffee table right up against it and they lean over to eat, to swipe their bread--it’s so fucking good--through the sauce that is _also_ so fucking good, and pop pieces of chicken into their mouths. Both of them have beers, although neither of them are really drinking them. Billy had said yes, had wanted one, but he’s secretly a little afraid of what it will do to his throat.

He knows there’s damage after what he did while he was--while that thing was using his body. He just doesn’t know how much. He stares at the beer and eats another piece of bread. He’s watching the television, but really he’s thinking about how Harrington is watching him.

“This is fucking amazing,” Billy says when he’s done. He’s had two plates of it and he’s pretty sure that he’s eaten maybe _all_ the bread? Harrington hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d made Billy stay sitting, had gotten up and refreshed both their plates when they were empty, and now Billy--freshly showered, comfortable--is leaning back against the couch. “Thanks,” he says, because he hasn’t said it yet, “For dinner. For--y’know. All of it.”

It’s hard to say and Billy wishes that it weren’t. He’s lived so much of his goddamn life doing it all for himself even when he hadn’t wanted to. He’s a little afraid that letting Harrington do it might make him soft, might make him rely on Harrington, who probably won’t be there, eventually.

“Yeah,” Harrington says. Billy looks over at him and their eyes meet. It’s a long time before either of them pull away. Harrington licks his lips and Billy’s eyes drop to his mouth, something in his stomach flipping. “Lemme do the dishes,” Harrington says, and Billy nods. “Be right back.”

While Harrington is gone, Billy moves the coffee table back. It’s not heavy, but it takes him a long time to do it and he’s a little out of breath before it’s done. He drops back onto the couch and pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them until his breathing settles, his gaze steady on the television, the sound of dishes being done in the kitchen.

It’s strange, really. It feels like they’re playing house. Billy hears something outside and jumps up, heads to the window, but it’s just snow. There’s not even a plow on the street. “Billy?” Harrington says. Billy jumps and Harrington grabs his arm to steady him. “Just me,” he says. “What’s--”

“I thought I heard something,” Billy mutters, embarrassed.

“I think I hear shit all the time,” Harrington says. “Sometimes I don’t sleep for days because all night I think I hear shit.”

“Is that why you always look so tired?” Billy asks. Harrington is still gripping his arm. Billy leans into it.

Harrington snorts. “Gee, thanks,” he says, then seems to hesitate. “Yeah,” he says. “I get a lot of nightmares.” He lets go of Billy’s arm, but steps up beside him, instead. The two of them stare out into the snow as Billy leans his weight into Harrington’s side. For a second, Harrington seems to hesitate, then he wraps his arm around Billy’s waist. Billy’s cheek falls to his shoulder. “Are you tired?” Harrington asks.

Billy is so tired. He’s so fucking tired all the time. He’s tired of his dad’s voice in his head and he’s tired of the tests and the needles and the pills and he’s tired of that little concrete room and he’s tired of people who knock once and then barge in and he’s _tired_ of feeling so fucking _awful_ and--

And none of that, not one ounce of it, is his reality right now. Harrington’s house is glowing with christmas lights. There’s a tree with ornaments and a star that has a disco ball inside. It rotates slowly, casting starts onto the ceiling. Harrington’s arm is around him, and Billy isn’t cold at all, and the house is big, and it’s warm, and he feels really, really good.

“I’m not tired,” Billy says softly. “Have you ever made a snow angel?”

Somehow, they’ve fallen into questions again without really meaning to. Billy’s never met someone who so earnestly wants to know so much about his fucking life and feelings and story. Even the stupid questions, the softball ones, even those make Billy feel seen.

“Yeah,” Harrington says. “Have you?”

“No,” Billy admits quietly and then they’re both grinning.

~*~

Twenty minutes later, they’re lying on their backs outside, breathing hard, snow on both their faces. Billy is laughing and Steve loves that sound almost as much as he’d liked the warmth of Billy pressed against him inside the house. Steve sits up and half-heartedly tosses some snow in Billy’s direction. It misses by a mile. “I thought you used to play baseball,” Billy says, and Steve laughs, because he did.

“I used to play basketball too,” he points out, “And _someone_ made it clear I was _terrible_ at that, so…” he trails off and gets a snowball _directly to the face_ for his efforts. He laughs and flops back down and listens to the silence of the night, just Billy’s breathing and all the nothing of a snowfall. It’s like the world has been muted. Steve kind of wishes it would stay that way.

“Let’s do questions,” he hears Billy say. 

Steve is staring up at the clouds and feeling little cold pinpricks of snow on his face. “Okay,” he says. “I think it’s your turn.”

For a long time, Billy is silent. Then, “Will you ask me about my mom again?”

Steve thinks of Billy’s face, how it had shut down that day. He nearly sits up to look at him, but he’s afraid if he does that Billy will take it back and Steve doesn’t want that. He wants to know. “What happened to your mom?” he asks, his voice soft.

Billy laughs, which surprises him, but it’s bitter. “She left,” Billy says. “She went grocery shopping one day and she never fucking came back and for a while, she would call and it would be _I know, baby. I’m coming. I know it’s hard_ and then she stopped calling and then my dad met Susan and then we moved to fucking Indiana. _Fuck_ Indiana. _Fuck it_.” 

He gets loud toward the end, angry, but Steve hears it for what it really is and he reaches across the snow between them to grab Billy’s gloved hand.

“The fucking bitch,” Billy says. “She could have taken me with her. She didn’t have to leave me with _him_.”

Steve squeezes Billy’s hand.

_What happened to your arm?_

_Nothing._

_But it’s got bruises. They look like fingerprints. Look I can put mine right on--_

_Ow! Stop it!_

_Sorry._

_It’s my fault anyway. Just don’t touch them._

_Okay. What happened?_

_I don’t want to talk about it._

_Maybe you can ask your mom for some ice. My mom isn’t good at stuff like that but we can go to your house and ask your mom?_

_No we can’t._

_We never go to your house._

_I don’t want to go to my house. My mom isn’t there anyway. She went grocery shopping._

_Maybe she’ll get some ice._

_Maybe._

_Billy, I’m leaving tomorrow._

_What? That’s early._

_My dad has a thing. But it’s okay! I’ll be back next year. I’ll bring you a really good Christmas present._

_More of those cars? I like those cars._

_Anything you want_ , Steve had said, ten years old and with his very best friend in the world for the last time.

Until, he thinks, right now. 

“How old were you when she left?” Steve asks.

“It’s my fucking turn to ask the question.”

“Sorry.”

“I was ten,” Billy says. “It was just after Christmas.” 

Steve’s heart is _pounding_ in his chest. He could ask him. “Did you have a fr--”

“It’s _my turn_ ,” Billy bites out, yanking his hand from Steve’s. When Steve looks over, Billy’s sitting up, his chin on his knees. Steve wants to say _you said I could ask_ , but he’s afraid to do that. He sits up, too. He scoots closer to Billy, but he doesn’t touch him. “Where are your parents?” Billy asks.

Steve looks away. “California,” he says.

“Why aren’t you there?” Billy asks.

“I thought it was my tu--”

“You asked two. Why aren’t you there?”

Steve hesitates for a second and then sighs. “Because they don’t want me there,” he admits. “And I’d just seen you for the first time. And I thought, I dunno, maybe you wanted me here instead.”

“I did,” Billy says. “I do. Sorry for being a dick.”

“I’m used to it,” Steve says, shooting him a smile, and it’s his turn, so. “Do you want to go back inside and watch a movie?”

Billy nods. “Yeah,” he says quietly. 

They stomp off snow back by the pool, then strip down out of jackets and snow pants. When Billy lifts his hands to wriggle out of the additional hoodie Steve had grabbed him for warmth, his shirt lifts and Steve can see the scars. He’s seen them before. He can also see _his_ boxers peeking out over the tops of the sweats Billy has on and that--it makes Steve’s stomach flip and he’s not sure why. Maybe he is sure why and he’s just afraid to admit it.

They settle back onto the couch and Steve flips around until they find a movie on television to watch. There’s quiet, for a while, and then Billy says he’s tired, and Steve almost suggests they go to sleep, but Billy gets up and clicks all the lights off except for the Christmas ones, and comes back to the couch, and leans into Steve’s side, so Steve decides they can just stay here, for a while. He likes the way Billy feels against him, anyway. He likes his warmth, the rhythm of his breathing.

Steve closes his eyes, but just for a second. 

When he opens them, he’s sprawled out on his back, his head pillowed on a couch cushion. Billy’s asleep, too, on top of him. Steve doesn’t remember moving like this, but he likes it now that they’re there. He reaches up with one hand to yank a throw blanket over Billy’s back, covering them both. His other hand rubs lazily up and down Billy’s back.

If this were any other time, if it were any other moment, Steve might question what it means for the two of them to lie like this, pressed together in the Christmas-light-lit darkness of a snowy evening, but it isn’t any other time, it is just this one, and the world is fucking muted, and Steve hopes it stays that way. 

“Stop fucking moving,” Billy grumbles. 

“Shh,” Steve says, “I’m _sleeping_.”

“No you’re fucking not,” Billy says. He shifts on top of Steve, lifting himself up a little bit to look down at him. Billy’s eyes are so blue, even when the only light to see them in are Steve’s stupid fucking Christmas decorations. Steve removes his hand from the small of Billy’s back. He finds himself cupping Billy’s cheek in his palm. “Your hands are cold,” Billy says, and his cheek isn’t. It fits perfectly right there in Steve’s hand. Billy’s lips part, a little. Steve keeps looking at him and Billy doesn’t look away.

“Sorry,” Steve says, but he doesn’t pull away or let go.

“S’okay,” Billy says back. “I like it.”

“Yeah?” and Steve lifts his other hand, cupping Billy’s face in both palms, now, and their eyes meet again, and for one spectacular second, the world is frozen.

Steve strokes his fingertips along Billy’s hospital-shortened hair and then he pulls him down and kisses him.

It is soft and slow and sleepy, a four am snowstorm kiss, an _I’m lost, too_ kiss, an _I’m so glad you’re still here_ kiss, a kiss with more questions than answers. It is the best kiss of Steve’s life and it’s over probably too soon. It’s Billy who breaks it off, who licks into Steve’s mouth for just a heartbeat before he pulls away. Both of them are breathing too hard for something so simple.

“Was that okay?” Billy asks. Steve is surprised by the question. 

“I kissed you. I should be asking,” he says.

“No, I kissed you,” Billy says.

Steve laughs and Billy does too. Both of them seem to exhale all at once. Billy folds himself back down on top of Steve and Steve wraps both his arms around Billy as Billy’s face pushes into his neck. Steve rubs Billy’s back, pushing his hands up under the clothes he’s wearing--Steve’s clothes--to finally trace his fingertips over the knotted flesh of those scars. He’s been thinking about doing that since the beginning of December, and now he can.

He opens his mouth to ask Billy about California, but he hesitates, and Billy’s breathing slows against his neck. He’s asleep all at once, and Steve smiles to himself and decides that question can wait until morning, just one more day, because those are old memories and this--this is a new one, a good one, his best one, maybe.

Steve closes his eyes and he sleeps, deep and satisfied, thinking he’s lived maybe the best day in his life. 

The next morning, one sharp, loud knock on his front door wakes them both up.

“Shit,” Billy says.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, y'all. <3


	8. December 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th.....21st

December 16th:

Steve is the one who gets up to answer the door, but he can feel Billy following behind him. He looks over his shoulder and Billy’s right there, so Steve slows, stops, turns around. Billy looks at him for a second, then reaches out, curls his fingers in Steve’s sweater and holds on like Steve is about to go over a cliff’s edge. Maybe he is. “What if you just don’t answer it?” Billy says, but they both know what happens. Steve lifts his own hand, curling it around where Billy’s fisting his shirt. He loosens Billy’s fingers one by one and then lets go of his hand.

“My mom would kill me if they broke her door down,” he says. It’s a joke, but neither of them laugh. Behind them, there’s a voice. 

“Mr. Harrington,” it says, booming, authoritative. “If you don’t open this door--”

Steve shoots Billy a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Billy doesn’t bother to fake a smile back. Instead, they both look back at the door. Steve starts toward it. Just before he opens it, he looks back. Billy is leaning against the wall, around the corner. He’s got his arm wrapped around himself, the other is gripping the edge of the wall. Steve wishes he had a camera. His stomach warms and his heart beats too quickly.

He has the strange sense that he should say something, but he doesn’t know what to say, so he smiles again and then he turns around and opens the door.

He’s not expecting the men on the other side. He’d pictured the friendly doctor, maybe with one guard, but this is a troop of six, decked out in what Steve’s brain perceives as SWAT gear, or something, but that might not be right. It’s funny. He knows more about the inner workings of the Russian military than these top secret scientists.

It’s not funny.

Steve steps half outside, pulling the door mostly shut behind him, blocking Billy from view. The doctor, the nurses, _sure_ , he could have managed that, but he’s not sure he wants Billy to go anywhere with these people. He has a half-cocked plan to just say he’ll drive him back and they can follow, but then the lead guy, the yelling one, he steps in _very_ close.

Something in Steve’s spine feels like iron. He meets the man’s gaze. He thinks _I have been tortured by Russians and fought monsters from your goddamn nightmares and you don’t fucking scare me_.

“We need to take the subject back to the facility, now,” the man says.

Something low in Steve’s belly curdles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. _I’m not afraid to lie to you_ , he means. 

“Mr. Harrington,” the man says. He knows Steve’s name. Like the doctor, he hasn’t introduced himself. Steve falters. He isn’t stupid. He’d known they’d come back for Billy, but he’d tricked himself, maybe, into believing it would be the doctor who came, soft and amused, maybe even understanding. Gentle, like he had been the day that Steve made Billy freak the fuck out. This man isn’t that. He calls Billy _the subject_ and he calls Billy’s bunker _the facility_ and now Steve wonders if they should have really made a break for it. “The subject--”

“I don’t know any _subjects_ ,” Steve snarls, stepping closer. “So you can just go fuc--”

This was always going to be a losing game. He’s out here in sweatpants and a sweater and he’s not wearing any shoes. Still, he tries to back up, to slam the door shut. His bat is somewhere, probably, if they could just buy a little time, but--

They shove Steve backwards and the door opens with him. He turns to move toward Billy, but one of them--not the lead guy--catches him. They slam him into the wall so hard that for a second, Steve sees stars. He thinks _run_ , but he can’t say it. Fuck. That hurt. 

He shoves his hands out anyway, still trying to get away, and then there’s a hand at his throat. “Sir,” the voice says as Steve keeps fighting. “He won’t stop.”

“Then you’ll need to neutralize the thr--”

“I’m coming,” Billy’s voice, ragged, breathless, cuts through the end of whatever was about to be said.

“Billy--” Steve starts.

“We were just having a sleepover,” Billy says. He’s ignoring Steve. He doesn’t even look at him. “It was just one night. I was always gonna come back. You don’t have to--just let go of him. I’m coming.”

The man drops Steve as Billy starts walking down the hallway. Steve nearly reaches for Billy, but he’s stopped short by a hand at his chest, keeping him up against the wall. Two more men grab Billy, one at each arm, and they pull him forward so suddenly Billy stumbles.

“He said he’s _going_ ,” Steve protests. “What the fuck. He said he’s _going_ \--”

“Harrington, _don’t_ ,” Billy bites out as Steve pushes against the man again. “Just _shut up_.”

Steve’s frozen, then.

He watches them half-drag Billy down his steps. He watches as they toss him into the back of a van.

“Wait--” he says, but it fizzles out. What’s he going to say? He’s in over his head.

The man holding him lets go, smoothes off Steve’s sweater, where it had gotten rumpled from being thrown around. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” the guy says, like maybe he just asked too many questions when Steve was in a hurry. “Have a good day, Mr. Harrington,” and then he’s gone, and the van is gone, and Billy is gone, and Steve sits down on the cold floorway of his empty house and lets his head thunk back against the wall.

“You could have at least let me say goodbye,” Steve says, but there’s no one in the house to hear him. 

~*~

The van ride back to the _facility_ is bumpy and cold. 

Billy spends most of it pressed against the corner farthest from the door with his face in his knees, regretting those last few minutes inside the house. He should have fought harder. He should have done something when they put their hands on Harrington. Once, he would have. Back in California, people didn’t _fuck_ with people Billy Hargrove loved. Here in Hawkins it seems like it just keeps happening. He should have fought harder, but what the fuck was he supposed to do? He’s winded just from snapping at Harrington, winded from cutting that guy off to tell him he was giving up, giving in. Billy closes his eyes as tightly as he can and hooks his hands behind his head.

_Pussy_ , his dad reminds him. Maybe he’s right. Billy can’t remember, in this moment, what he used to fight for. He can’t remember as they pull him down the hallway and chuck him into his room, what the point of any of it was. He hits the concrete floor with a grunt, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.

Out of habit, maybe looking for an anchor, he reaches out to drag his fingers along the patterns of the rug Harrington had brought him the third time he visited. His fingers meet nothing but concrete floor.

Billy sits up, then stands up, spinning around to take in his little bunker. It’s gone. _Everything_ is gone. No rug, no radio, no clock, no pillows, no quilt at the end of his bed. For a second, he wonders if maybe they put him in the wrong room, a different room, but when you spent five months never leaving one place, well. You know it when you see it. This is his room.

And everything is gone.

Billy sinks down to sit on the floor, pressed up against the wall. Even his couch is gone, the little coffee table. This is now a concrete room with a bed in it. A cage. _His_ cage. They took it all away.

Billy is no stranger to punishment. He doesn’t have enough fingers or toes to count the number of times something was removed or broken or mangled to teach him a lesson, but at least he could still leave, could climb out a window. He gets up and tries the door, but it’s locked. He bangs on it until he’s winded and no one comes to answer it.

Billy sits back down on the floor and puts his face into his hands and lets himself think the thought that’s going to break him.

What if they never let him see Harrington again?

He’s still struggling to catch his breath or find his footing when the door whirrs and clanks. There is no knock before it opens.

Billy stands up. “What the fuck is going on?” he says. “Where is all my shit?” 

The nurses who enter are unfamiliar. Billy doesn’t _know_ them. His heart races and the machines start beeping. He feels hot all over. It takes him a second to recognize anger. Real. He’s the kind of angry he used to be all the time.

“I asked you a fucking _question_ ,” he snarls, moving towards them.

A nurse looks toward the door, which they’d left open. “The subject is in distress.”

“The subject is going to fucking kill someone if you don’t tell me _where my shit is_ ,” Billy says, but then there are more people in the room, and they grab him, and there’s a needle in his arm, and everything goes dark.

~*~

Steve isn’t on the floor for very long. It’s long enough that he spends the whole drive over to the facility--weird to have a name for it now, weirder still for it to be a name so tinged with darkness, but what did he expect? What did he think would happen? Was he planning on thinking of that building as Billy’s _home_ \--beating himself up about the delay. He could have gotten up faster. He could have answered the door with his bat. The second they left, he could have been hot on their heels, pushing the BMW to its very expensive limits, but instead he sat on the floor and felt like the house was empty, the world was empty, like maybe he was empty too.

It’s quiet when he gets there. There’s no sign of the van beyond tire tracks in the snowy ground. Steve gets out of the car and realizes he didn’t bring his jacket or his gloves. Just snow boots. The last feet to be in this pair were Billy’s. Steve wriggles his toes as he walks toward the door and wonders if maybe he wishes hard enough, maybe he can swap places with Billy. 

He’d seen it on his face when Billy looked at the Christmas lights and the sky and Steve’s backyard. He’d heard it in the resignation of Billy’s voice as he’d said _I’m coming, it was only ever for one night_.

Billy wants to be free.

Steve wants to give him that, no matter what it takes, even if it means they swap places, even if it means his finger falls off from pushing the buzzer, or his hand breaks from banging on the door.

_Buzz_.

_Buzz_.

_Buzz. Buzz. Buzz._

_Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz._

_Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz._

_Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz._

He presses the button until he’s numb from the cold and his finger does ache and then he bangs on the door. “Let me in!” he yells. He looks around for the camera, sure there must be one, but he can’t find it. He thinks of doors that are half-invisible and he thinks of Billy’s door.

_Buzz. Buzz. Buzz._

Steve is shivering. He should have worn a jacket. He licks his lips because they’re cold and chapped even though he knows that’ll just make it worse. Predictably, it does. He thinks about how he and Billy kissed only hours ago, how his mouth was warm, then. He bangs harder, his fingers curled into a fist. When he pulls his hand away, it’s slick with blood. He swallows hard and shivers and waits.

Eventually, he sits in his car and turns it on, and he shivers with the chill and blasts the heat and stares at the door. He’s ready to jump out if he needs to. He’s ready to run back into that place and down the hallway, ready to pry that stupid door open with nothing but his teeth if that’s what it takes. He could do it. If he needed to, if Billy were really on the other side, he could do it.

There’s no sign of life, though, and eventually it’s dark out, and Steve’s hand is bleeding less and aching more. Already he can see a nasty bruise, see the way it’s spreading where he’d hit. He half expects to hear a message. Maybe that’s why he’s stayed out here so long. He expects someone to come outside and tell him that he should go, that there’s no point in this, that they won’t let him see Billy again.

No one does, though. Steve, sitting in the dark in his car, staring at the door they won’t let him through, becomes aware all at once how abandoned this building looks. An empty parking lot with tire tracks, no lights on the outside, the complete and utter silence of the night around it. 

When he was little, sometimes he’d ask his dad a question, something stupid, innocuous, the kinds of things little kids asked. His dad had rarely answered. Steve had spent a lot of his childhood afraid that he was imagining saying things out loud, afraid that he was making it up, that he’d never spoken at all.

This feels like that. Steve cradles his aching hand against his chest and it’s almost hard to believe that this silent, empty, concrete building in the middle of nowhere is a place he’s ever been inside.

It’s almost _impossible_ to believe it by the time he turns and drives away.

December 16th had started when he woke up with Billy warm on his chest, and they’d kissed.

December 16th ends with Steve sitting on the bathroom floor, trying to clean and ice his bruised and swollen hand, the house empty, its silence suffocating.

~

December 17th:

_Buzz._

_Buzz._

_Buzzbuzzbuzz._

“I’m not leaving,” Steve says. Today he’s wearing gloves, a scarf, a hat, a big jacket, snow pants. He shivers. It’s gray outside and threatening snow. “I’m not leaving,” he repeats. “Let me in. I want to talk to someone.”

_Buzz. Buzz. Buzzbuzzbuzz._

~

December 18th:

_Buzz._

“Come on, you assholes! Just let me see him! Let me _in_! This is _bullshit_. He’s a person! You can’t _do_ this. Open the fucking door! Open the door! _Let me in_!”

~

December 19th: 

“Please,” Steve says. He rings the doorbell twice. “Please just tell me he’s fucking okay.”

~

On December 20th, Steve doesn’t say anything at all. He sits on the ground outside the door, closes his eyes, and waits.

~

December 21st:

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

The door had swung open before Steve even got to it. The doctor with the kind face is on the other side. He looks pensive. Tired. Like it’s been a few days since he last slept. Steve would feel badly, only he doesn’t. He hasn’t slept in a while either. He holds still for a second, frozen midstep. He’s been yelling at this door, waiting at this door for _days_ and now it’s open. 

He has a million questions. “I just want to know he’s okay,” Steve says.

The doctor watches him for a moment and then he inclines his head. “I haven’t told them,” he says. “That you continue to come here,” he drums his fingers against a clipboard he’s holding. “In fact,” he says. “I’ve told them you stayed at home. That you keep the lights on all night. That you aren’t eating. That you don’t talk to anyone.”

Steve’s heart is racing. “And they believe you?”

The doctor sighs. “Of course they do, Steve,” he says. “It’s exactly what you were doing until--” he looks down at the clipboard he’s holding, “November 23rd. Your first visit, yes?”

Steve’s mouth goes dry. “How do you know what I’ve been doing?” he asks unsteadily.

The doctor sighs again, long and deep, like he is very tired of answering stupid questions. “We know what all of you have been doing since July,” he says. “Did you really think we weren’t watching?”

“Who is w--” and Steve stops and takes another step forward. His fingers curl and his hand, still bruised, aches. “You know what? I don’t care. Where is he?”

The doctor steps to the side and motions Steve in. “Let’s talk first,” he says. “Then I’ll take you to see Billy.”

Steve hesitates, his heart racing, looking at the open door and the long, quiet hallway with all the invisible doors lining its walls. No one knows he’s here. Would anyone even notice if he went missing?

“Steve,” the doctor says. “If we wanted to lock you away, we could do it. I don’t need to bait you inside.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” Steve asks.

“You don’t,” the doctor says. “But it’s cold and in a moment I’m going to close this door and go back to work. Do you really want to risk being wrong?”

Steve’s jaw tenses and he looks away, but when the doctor shifts to shut the door, Steve barges past him.

Behind him, the door clanks, whirrs, locks. Steve takes a deep breath. “Let’s talk,” he says.

In for a penny, or whatever that fucking saying is.


	9. December 21st, continued

December 21st, continued

Billy dreams of the ocean.

He dreams of swimming. Of drowning. Of flying. Of falling. He dreams of a crushing weight on his chest.

He dreams of monsters. He dreams and he does not wake up.

He dreams of California.

He is young, still. Real young--not like he is now, but truly a _child_. Naive, maybe. Or innocent. He is on a beach, walking. His lip is split. He’s licking at it. It’s the first time he’s been backhanded. His dad had been yelling at his mom and it had seemed an easy choice to get between them, to step between someone being hurt and someone doing the hurting. To yell _stop_. 

In this dream, he’s trying to decide what to do with the money in his pocket that his mom slipped him when she told him to go for a walk. He’s excited by all the possibility in this new reality. He never gets money to spend on his own and now he has it and he feels like he can do anything he wants.

He’s distracted by the mission he’s on by the sound of yelling. Billy spins around slowly, in this dream, and he finds the source of it all. Huddled in the shadow of the lifeguard chair are four boys. Three he recognizes -- they live around here, the other he’s not so sure about. He walks forward before he can decide not to. The three who live nearby, they’re the ones doing the yelling.

“You new?” one says. “You got any money?” and the kid--who is new--just stares, wide-eyed and blinking. “C’mon, you look like you got money. You got nice shoes.”

The three kids are bigger, older. Billy is only eight years old, but already he’s got something of a reputation. Besides, it’s an easy choice once two of the three grab the new kid and throw him into the sand. Once he sees that, Billy steps between someone being hurt and someone doing the hurting.

After, when they’re gone, Billy licks his split lip and flexes sore knuckles. It is the first time he learns that when he feels badly, like he had walking down this beach, he can hit something to make it feel better.

He turns around to the new kid and holds out his hand. He thinks about the fight he’d just had and how good it had felt to yell after them while they’d fled. _I’d run too_! Those words taste good in his mouth. They taste like power or maybe like control. “Sorry about them,” Billy says, like he’s casual, like everything is just fine, like there isn’t a storm brewing inside him he doesn’t know enough about, yet, to stop. When he does know enough, it will be too late. He grins, slow and confident and so, so young. “You new here?” 

The kid has got big eyes and too much hair. His grip in Billy’s hand is hesitant, but he says. “I’m Steve,” as Billy pulls him up. He says, “I’m from Indiana,” as he brushes sand off his shorts.

A wave crashes against the beach and Billy eyes open wide.

He is in the hospital bed, not on the beach. The ceiling is not the sky. He stares at it anyway while machines around him bleep. Billy exhales and then he sits up all at once, reaching for the edge of the bed. He has the strangest urge to _go somewhere_ and _do something_ , but he’s not sure why. Reality is fuzzy. He touches the sheets and half expects sand.

“He’s _awake_!” someone yells, and then there’s something on his face, and Billy thrashes, yells, but he breathes in anyway and he feels himself falling backwards, again, back into sleep, back into darkness.

Just before the ocean inside him swallows him up, he thinks, _it wasn’t a dream_. Just before his head slips beneath the waves, he thinks, _it was a memory._

_I knew him_.

~

They are in the same office that Steve’s seen before. Wood paneled walls. Comfortable furniture. The doctor sits behind the desk and rubs his temples, then jots something down on the clipboard before he looks up at Steve. “Would you like a drink?” he asks. “I could use a drink.”

Steve stares at him. “I’m not twenty-one,” he says.

“You expect me to believe you don’t drink?” the doctor asks, almost wry, and Steve wonders what the fuck is going on.

“It’s like, eight in the morning,” Steve says.

“Suit yourself,” the doctor answers, and he’s pouring himself a glass. His eyes flicker over to Steve who hesitates and nearly says yes, but he’s spent a lot of time these last few months trying to get alcohol to make whatever is broken inside him go away and it’s never worked. Billy is in this building, somewhere. Steve needs to keep his shit together.

“You said you wanted to talk,” Steve says after another several heartbeats of silence. “So let’s fucking talk.” He is trying to seem brave. He wonders if it’s working.

The doctor is sitting, again. He’s holding the glass in one hand and he leans back in the chair and sighs as he looks Steve over. “I can’t say I blame you,” he says after a few minutes. “But what the two of you did was incredibly stupid.”

“You expect me to believe you didn’t know what we were doing?” Steve asks. It’s clear to him now that this isn’t some isolated facility. _Did you really think we weren’t watching_? 

The doctor drums the fingers of his free hand on his desk. “I’ll admit I was curious,” he allows.

“Curious about _what_?” Steve snaps. These games, these half truths, they’re making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His skin prickles.

“What would happen to him,” the doctor says.

Steve freezes. “What?”

“The thing is,” the doctor murmurs, leaning forward now. He sips from the glass and sets it down. “We don’t really understand what happened to Billy. We have a rough idea. Jane helps--”

“Why isn’t _she_ locked in some facility?”

The doctor raises an eyebrow. “Do you want her to be?”

“No, I--”

“Then let’s stay on topic, yes?” He waits a beat, watching Steve, whose mouth snaps closed and twists. “Jane helps,” the doctor continues. “She has some knowledge that adds a little reality to our guesswork. Will’s files help, too. They suggest the possibility of a recurrence, you see.”

Steve feels cold, suddenly. Deeply, bone-chillingly cold. “You wanted to see if it would come back for him,” Steve says. “If I took him out of here.”

“Yes,” the doctor says. “I did.”

“Well it didn’t,” Steve says. His grip on the chair is white-knuckled. “It didn’t come back for him.” 

“Not yet,” the doctor allows. “But it could.”

“It’s _gone_ ,” Steve snarls, but the doctor shakes his head. He doesn’t need to tell Steve that’s probably not true. Steve knows. Steve has seen these motherfuckers keep coming _back._ “It’s gone from _him_ ,” Steve says, “At the very fucking least.”

“But it will probably return,” the doctor says. “If not to him, then to someone else. The Russians are working on--” he pauses and his gaze slides to Steve for a second. “Well,” he murmurs. “I don’t need to tell _you_ what the Russians are working on, do I?”

All at once, Steve can’t catch his breath. “I don’t know what you’re--”

“Oh, spare me the lie, won’t you, Steve?” the doctor cuts him off. There’s something about him that’s different, now. Maybe a little less friendly. Steve’s fingers go tight on the arms of the chair he’s sitting in. The doctor’s eyes never leave him. “I know you were captured. I know you were tortured. I know you were drugged. I know,” he reaches for a file, flips it open, “That you reported the drugs made it hard for you to recall many details of the operation. Ms. Buckley reported the same and of course, the girl is much too young to be useful.”

_You shouldn’t write her off_ , Steve nearly says, but doesn’t. If they aren’t interested in her then that’s probably for the fucking best. “The drugs and the head trauma,” Steve offers instead. “My memory is fuzzy.”

“I’m sure it is,” the doctor says. “But we could, perhaps, help you remember. You could tell us more about what you saw down there.”

Steve keeps holding the edges of the chair. He’s fighting through shallow breaths and he’s fighting against remembering. He’s thought, for the longest time, that he’s stupid, but he thinks in this moment about Nancy, about what she would do. She’d try and blow the place up, maybe. He thinks in this moment about what he could do. It dawns on him slowly, but steadily. “You said we were here to talk about Billy,” Steve hedges.

The doctor smiles and that’ show Steve knows that he’s got it right. “Yes,” the doctor says, reaching for another file. “Several of my colleagues believe it best that Billy--the subject, of course--remains here for observation. They think it’s safer for the people of Hawkins, for themselves, and even perhaps for Billy.” He keeps looking down at the file.

“You don’t think that,” Steve says.

“I think,” the doctor says, “That an experiment that lives only in a controlled situation when we know so little about the variables in reality is not as useful to me as I’d like it to be.”

“Him,” Steve says. “Not it.”

“Yes, of course,” the doctor says. “I’m talking about Billy.” There’s a pause. “But it would be quite a lot of work for me to convince my colleagues, you see,” he says. “To let you take him back out into the wilds of the world. To set him up with the documentation to be alive again, a person, living and breathing out there in the world. It would be quite a lot of work indeed. I’m not sure if it’s worth it.”

Steve exhales long and slow. “And if I told you about Russia,” Steve says. “And what I saw. That would--”

“It would help make the work worth it,” the doctor agrees. “But it wouldn’t be just you telling us,” he says, leaning forward. “I want to make sure that you understand. It would be a great deal more than that. We’d need to examine your memory closely.”

There’s a heavy pause. Finally, Steve nods. “Go inside my head,” he translates.

“Yes,” the doctor says. “I want to make sure you understand, Steve. It will likely be very uncomfortable.”

Steve wonders if they’ll ask El to do it to him or if they have someone else. Maybe they have their own person who does shit like that, or a machine that can make it happen. Maybe they have something else. He’s realizing how much bigger all this is than Billy’s little room, but maybe he should have known. Nancy would have known, probably. He should have told her--told someone--before he came here.

And then, of course, he thinks about what the doctor is asking him to do. He thinks, really thinks, about what he experienced down below the fucking mall, and his eyes slip shut, just for a second. He’s spent so much time trying not to think about it. Trying to _never_ think about it. “If I agree,” Steve says, “Billy gets to leave here. Permanently.”

“He’ll return for check ups,” the doctor corrects, “And we’ll drop by, but yes. We’ll set him up with an apartment. Funds. You see, Steve, what you have in your memories, it’s good stuff. We’ve done our best to put a picture together, but you saw it in action. We need to know how they--how it was, down there, before things went wrong. You’d be doing a great service to your country.”

He doesn’t need that, though. All Steve needs is this: Billy, in an apartment, with his identity back, with the possibility of a life, with rugs and windows and sunlight, maybe a Christmas tree of his own.

“Okay,” Steve says. “I’ll do it. But I want to see him first.”

“I thought you might,” the doctor finishes his drink and stands up. “Please, come with me.”

They leave through the ornate, wood-paneled door in the doctor’s study. Steve turns around after it closes, but it blends seamlessly into the wall, vanished. He follows the doctor down the long hallway, toward the only door that he can see. Billy’s door. The doctor does something and the door clanks and whirrs. When the doctor reaches out to open it, Steve reaches out, too. He grips the doctor’s wrist. “Knock first,” he says before he lets go.

“Ah,” the doctor says. He’s almost smiling. Steve looks away. “Yes, of course.” He knocks and waits a beat. “He won’t be able to answer,” the doctor says, nearly apologetic. He pulls the door open and they step into the room.

Steve’s first thought is that they’ve got it all wrong. This can’t possibly be Billy’s room. There should be a rug here, and a radio, there should be piles of books and stupid little shit that Steve’s been bringing, that El has been bringing, but the room is cold and bare, lit only by fluorescent lights overhead. There’s not even a couch anymore, or a coffee table. Just the bed with the beeping machines and--in it--Billy.

Steve steps forward, around the doctor, towards the bed. He stumbles to a stop.

They’ve shorn Billy’s hair again. Steve’s eyes search his face, which is still with sleep, and pale. The Billy from his memories was tanned and freckled, but in this bed, you’d never know it. When he’d left Steve’s house he’d been in borrowed sweats and socks, but this Billy, tucked under the thin blankets--no quilt anymore, no decorative pillows--is in a hospital gown. Steve turns back to look at the doctor, to open his mouth, to yell, but he’s gone.

Steve hadn’t heard him leave. He looks at the door and wonders if there’s another, invisible one. Maybe a hole opened in the floor and swallowed him up. Good, Steve thinks. He hopes the fall was fucking bone-crushing.

Steve sits on the edge of the bed. He wants to reach out and touch Billy, but he’s not sure how to. He doesn’t want to scare him awake. He hesitates, but then reaches out, running the tips of his fingers over Billy’s fuzzy hair. He imagines the conversation they could have: _you’re doing what?_ Billy would demand, all fire and angry energy, and Steve would explain. Nancy, from wherever she is right now, would appear, _Steve, are you sure? You haven’t really known him that long. You’ve only kissed once_ , and she would touch Steve’s arm and her eyes would be gentle. Robin would say, _go for it, also, you could have told me you liked dudes when we were in that bathroom. Anyway, I’m here. You can do this_. 

And Steve would look at all of them and say, _I’m sure. I’d do anything for him_ , and his eyes would slide to Billy, _for you_ , he’d say. _I’d fucking do anything for you_.

The realization is less startling, maybe, than it should be.

Steve breathes out slowly and strokes his fingers along Billy’s jaw. He leans over to press a slow kiss against his forehead. “I mean it,” Steve says, his voice soft. “Anything. I’m going to fucking get you out of here, Billy.”

If it’s the last goddamn thing he does.

Billy doesn’t wake up, while he’s there, but the doctor lets him stay for a while. Steve talks to Billy about stupid, useless shit, and he holds his hand, and he dreams out loud for them both about what’ll happen once Billy’s out of this place, once there’s no concrete door blocking their escape. Once there’s no more secrets.

The door behind them sounds and Steve exhales slowly. Someone knocks once, sharp, and then it opens. When he turns around the doctor is there with a nurse. He’s holding a set of scrubs in his hand. “Steve,” the doctor says, his voice gentle. Steve remembers when he used to think his face was kind. He’s not sure why he ever thought that. Here, in this moment, with Steve sitting on the edge of Billy’s bed, holding his hand, he’s not sure why anyone would ever mistake this man for kind. “We’re ready for you now. You can change in Billy’s bathroom and then we’ll bring you down the hall.”

Steve looks back at Billy and wants to tell him that he’s afraid, but it’s worth it. He might say it if Billy were awake, but he’s not, and the doctor is watching. Steve squeezes Billy’s hand, then lifts it. He brings it to his mouth and kisses each of Billy’s knuckles, and he thinks of eight years old, when those knuckles scared off a group of bullies, and he thinks of last November, when those knuckles nearly broke his face, and he thinks of December 16th, four in the morning, when those knuckles had grazed his jaw as they’d kissed like it was the only way to catch their breath.

Steve kisses the heart of Billy’s hand and he wishes like he has never wished for anything before that they could just go somewhere, away, just the two of them, and find stillness and peace and a little fucking joy, maybe. That can’t possibly be too much to ask.

“Steve?” the doctor prompts.

_I haven’t just met him_ , Steve would say to Nancy. _I’ve known him a long time. Since I was eight years old. I’d forgotten, but I think he was the best friend I’ve ever had._

“All right, man, all right, I’m fucking going,” Steve says as he stands up. He reaches out and snatches the scrubs from the doctor’s hands before he walks through a door to Billy’s bathroom. He shuts it behind him and notes, absently, that it doesn’t lock. Of course it doesn’t. 

Steve strips out of his clothes and pulls the scrubs on slowly. He folds the clothes into a neat pile like his mom always made him do and then he turns around and heads back out the door. He licks his lips, unsteady and uncertain, then sets the clothes carefully on the edge of Billy’s bed. _I’m scared_ , he wishes he could tell Billy. _I think this is going to suck_. He’d still do it, no hesitation, but he wishes that Billy were awake.

“It’s time, Steve,” the doctor says, and Steve nods, turns around, and follows them down the hallway, through another invisible door. Absently, he notices they hadn’t bothered to shut and lock Billy’s door, like it’s been just that easy this whole time, like all Steve had to do was agree to let them poke around inside his brain, make him relieve the worst fucking days of his life, and then they would let Billy go.

“What do I--” 

“Just sit in that chair, there,” the doctor says. “Just like that. Perfect.” He’s fiddling with something and he has his clipboard again. He’s starting to take notes. 

Steve looks around, confused. “I don’t understand. How are you going to--”

“That’s not something you need to know,” the doctor cuts him off. He pauses, “Are you having second thoughts, Steve?”

Steve hesitates, then shakes his head. “No,” he says quietly.

“Good,” the doctor says, humming to himself. “Billy will be awake by the time we’re done.” There’s a pause. Steve grips the edges of the chair, realizes there are straps, there. The doctor must see him look. “We’ll only use restraint if it’s necessary,” he says, and Steve wonders if he thinks that’s _reassuring_ or something. “All right,” the doctor says. He looks at a patch of the wall like he’s talking to someone. Steve wonders if it’s a window. “We can begin, now.”

Steve takes a deep breath as something pulls him into the folds of his own mind.

It doesn’t take long before he’s screaming.


	10. December 21st, continued, still.

December 21st, continued, again:

Billy wakes up slowly.

His mouth feels dry, like it’s stuffed with cotton. He’s got only a vague awareness of anything, for a few seconds. He blinks, slow and fuzzy. The last thing he remembers is something on his face. A mask, he thinks. Drugs, to make him stay out of it. When he touches around his mouth he can feel the indentations on his skin, so it can’t have been that long ago. He’s thinking about the ocean.

He’d known Steve Harrington before he’d shown up in Hawkins. Billy’s sure of that, now, even though he feels like he’s not sure of a whole lot. He remembers sand and fresh air and, for some reason, the smell of roast chicken. He wants to _tell_ Harrington about it. He wants to know if he remembers, too.

He must, Billy thinks. Harrington’s been coming here and asking him questions about California for a whole fucking month.

Billy sits up and runs a hand through his hair, then frowns when he realizes how short it is again. He has only vague memories of when they brought him back here. They’ve kept him out of it enough that he’s spent the last several days lost at sea, floating, tossed around in the familiar, stormy waves of his own heart and mind. Now, he’s sitting up. He feels dizzy, like he’s trying to get his land legs back.

He goes to scratch at his arm where the IV is and he’s startled to find there isn’t one. He lifts the blankets and there’s nothing clamped to his ankle, keeping him in bed. He looks around the room and sees the neat stack of clothes folded somewhere by his feet. Slowly, hesitantly, Billy slips out of bed and ditches the hospital gown.

He pulls the clothes on. He’d thought they were left for him, but they’re warm and they smell like Steve. For an embarrassingly long second, Billy tucks his nose into the fabric and breathes him in. His stomach flips as he looks around. The room is still bare of everything it used to hold, but it feels different, somehow. Maybe it’s the drugs or the clothes or the memories. Billy can’t be sure. He stumbles forward a few steps, then stops to listen, pretends it isn’t to get his feet under him. The silence of the place is eerie. Billy has known his little bunker home--his cage--to be many things, but silent like this, so empty of noise? That’s--that’s new.

The concrete floor is cold under his bare feet. He heads to the bathroom to splash water on his face. There’s no mirror, here, nothing he can use to see his reflection. Again, he runs his hand through his too short hair and tries to figure out what the fuck is going on. 

He slips out of the bathroom and toward the door of the little cage he’s called home for too long, now. It’s open. Billy pinches the sleeve of the shirt he’s wearing, like he’s trying to make sure it’s real. Steve must have been here. Did he set Billy up for another escape? Where _is_ he now? Does he remember, too?

He’s got questions for Steve Harrington and maybe--maybe now he can ask them.

Slowly, Billy pulls the door open the rest of the way. It doesn’t squeak. The hinges are well oiled, or whatever. When he steps outside, no alarm sounds and he doesn’t see any people. Thinking, now, he turns toward the exit, biting his thumb nail and feeling unsteady. The night that Steve broke him out, they had run down this halfway, giddy with it. Now, Billy moves slowly. He can see the door that, when opened, will spill in cold air and spit Billy out into the wilderness at the edges of Hawkins. He’s not totally sure what happens, after that.

He’s trying to decide when, abruptly, all at once, the silence evaporates into the sound of someone screaming.

Billy freezes. He turns around slowly and presses his back against the wall. He’s only a few feet from his room. He could go back inside.

He’s never thought about if there are _other_ people here. He’s always kind of assumed it was just him.

_Selfish_ , his dad’s voice says. _Do you think about anyone but yourself?_

If his dad were here, Billy would tell him yes, but that would be a lie, because he cares about, too, just one other person, and only recently, so.

The screaming had stopped while Billy was frozen, but it starts up again now. It isn’t really words, mostly just yelling. Sometimes it’s _no_ and _I can’t_ and most often, _please--_ cut short. It stops again and Billy’s trying to figure out why his chest feels so tight.

Another shout, a name, _Dustin, run_! And Billy realizes, all at once, why he feels so fucking awful.

Steve is screaming. That’s _Steve_.

Billy turns away from the exit and starts down the hallway, back the way he’d come, past his room, his eyes searching the walls for a door or a sign or _something_.

Billy is eight years old and he’s also not. He’s on a beach and in this fucking hallway. He’s doing what he used to do, what his first instinct always was.

He’s going to get between the someone hurting and the someone being hurt and then he’s going to make them _sorry_ for it.

~*~

_Tell us who you work for._

_Steve, they’re coming!_

_Gogogogogo!_

_This is crazy_!

They don’t limit their search to the Russians. Steve, trapped in his head, remembers everything, because that’s what they’re looking for. It takes him too long to realize it, that there’s a bigger scope to this, and so he’s with them, wandering through the Byers’s house and seeing the big one for the first time. He’s walking on the train tracks with Dustin. He’s in the junkyard, ripping Max away from the emergency exit on top of a school bus. He’s deciding that he’s got to give them bait, and he’s sliding over the hood of a car and it’s exhilarating and it makes him feel alive and he feels shame, for that, for needing the rush of this danger, and he feels terrified, too, of feeling this danger all over again.

It’s not all memories, which has always really been the problem for Steve. Some of what he walks through, guided by some force he doesn’t recognize, or see, or know, are his nightmares, the things he never _saw_ but always _sees_. Barb in his pool, a garbled corpse, screaming even though she’s dead, and him: frozen and unmoving. He craves the adrenaline rush of the hood of a car because at least that time he _did something_.

Steve is in that tunnel and he’s in his head and everything blurs together, the smell of dust and death and something rotten caught in his nose, so strong he can nearly taste it. He’s got Dustin, then, and he can smell his fear, too, and everything feels like death, tastes like death. But that’s not a nightmare, that’s what happened, he thinks, insists, and somewhere, somehow, he knows a doctor is writing that down.

He’d thought, so many times, that he would die, and when he dreams of those nights he always wakes up screaming. In reality, he hasn’t died, not yet, but in his nightmares? That’s never how it plays out. It’s warped. He drops Dustin, and they eat him. He yanks Max away too late.

In the dreams, Steve is never the hero. In his dreams, the Russians put a bullet in Robin when Steve says _I don’t know_. In his dreams, it’s not a needle, but a knife, the steady pool of his blood dripping down to soak his Scoops uniform.

In his dreams, the monster is him, is Billy, is everywhere, inescapable, is behind every corner he walks around.

He wants this to stop, to end, but only some of this is a dream, and so whatever is walking him through this, it doesn’t let him stop.

Much of it is real memory and real hurt and as whatever--or whoever--claws through his mind, what Steve is so aware of, is _too_ aware of, is the memory of all the ways in which his body can know pain.

What they want are the Russians, and they get that. They get that in so much detail that Steve might throw up, but they get other stuff, too. They _take_ other stuff, other memories, other experiences. He is aware enough to know that he’s not alone in his head, and aware enough, too, that it hurts and that he wants this to stop.

He’s aware enough to know that outside his head, someone is screaming. It takes him too long to realize that someone is him.

Maybe he _needs_ this to stop because brains aren’t meant to do this. They aren’t meant to be toured like museum exhibits or browsed through like the pages of a book.

This _hurts_.

There’s the sound of a door, a chair scraping, a startled sound. Steve wonders what fresh hell _this_ is, what nightmare, only--

“What the fuck are you _doing_ to him?”

No one had said this any one of Steve’s dreams. In his dreams, in his memories, even, he always has it coming.

“Billy--” Steve thinks that’s the doctor talking, but it’s hard to keep track of what’s in his head and what’s in the room.

_What are you doing to your toy?_

_His arm fell off. I’m trying to stick it back on._

_I think you need glue or something, Steve._

_Well the house doesn’t have glue, okay! I just wanna fix it. I just--_

_I have glue. Hold on. Don’t get so upset. You don’t gotta cry about it. There. See. You just need to let it dry. It’s okay. See? It’s okay now. It’s okay. Steve, it’s fine. Look--_

“Steve, it’s okay. It’s okay now. Open your eyes. Come the fuck on, look at me, Harrington, come _on_ you _asshole_ \--”

“That’s not how this memory goes,” Steve says. He feels foggy, but suddenly he’s looking at the room and not at the inside of his brain. Actually, he’s looking into Billy’s face. He’s afraid to move. His body still remembers hurt, but he manages to focus his gaze on Billy. “You’re very close to my face,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Billy answers. 

That makes Steve smile. He sags back against the chair, his breathing still a little ragged. He doesn’t hurt at all, he realizes. He pokes Billy’s cheek, curious, but it’s warm and real. When he touches his own face next, then his throat. There’s nothing but skin. No bruises, no gaping slashes, no wounds. It was all just in his mind. “That fucking sucked,” Steve announces, letting his eyes shut again.

“Yes,” the doctor murmurs. “But it was very helpful.” Steve jumps. He hadn’t remembered that the doctor was there. “ _You_ were very helpful.”

Billy is still standing in front of him, looking confused, looking around, looking like he maybe wants to make a run for it. He’s got his hand on Steve’s shoulder, his fingers curled into a fist, clinging to the fabric of the scrubs.

Steve reaches up and curls his fingers around Billy’s wrist. He squeezes, slides his thumb back and forth along the bone. “It’s fine,” Steve says. “We’re leaving now,” and his eyes lock on the doctor’s. “Right, doc?”

“We still need to finalize arrangements,” the doctor says. “Housing. Documentation--”

“He’ll stay with me,” Steve breaks in. “I’ll hide him until--we’re _leaving_ , all right?” but he doesn’t really mean it as a question.

There’s a moment where the doctor looks like he’s going to argue, but then he pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs, and nods. “Yes, fine,” he says, finally. He reminds Steve a little of Hopper, then. It makes Steve look away, like all over again he’s remembering what they’ve lost. “You can leave, both of you,” the doctor murmurs. “But I’m not sure you should drive, Steve.”

“I can drive,” Billy says, and Steve’s eyes snap to him just in time to see Billy grin. “Your car is nice. I bet it’s fast.”

There’s something in the way Billy says it that reminds Steve of that night outside the Byers’s house, when Billy had talked about _heebie jeebies_ with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. At the time, everything Billy said had sounded like a threat. There’s something now, in how he grips Steve’s shoulder, that sounds like a promise.

He wonders if Billy had been asking for help that night and none of them, not even Billy, had realized it. Something about that realization makes Steve feel quiet, and small, and exhausted. “Harrington,” Billy says, and Steve realizes he’s zoned out. “You good to walk?”

Is he? Steve’s not so sure. He grips the edges of the chair and tries. He feels, at first, like one of those fucking baby horses, all legs and confusion, but after a second, the dizziness passes. “My clothes--” he starts, then stops, really takes Billy in. “Are on your body.”

“I’d offer them back,” Billy says, “But all I got is a hospital gown and I don’t think anyone wants to watch me coming back from the dead with my ass hanging out.”

Steve might like to watch that, actually, but it doesn’t feel helpful to point that out. He shrugs. “It’s fine,” he says. “I can just wear the scrubs home,” and he glances at the doctor when he says it, still half expecting to hear _just kidding_ and _take them both_. He’s trying to seem brave, but when the doctor looks at him, Steve reaches for Billy’s hand.

“We’ll be in touch,” the doctor says, _we’re watching_ , Steve understands. His fingers tighten around Billy’s, but neither of them answer the doctor. They turn away as one and then they walk out of that little room and past Billy’s little cage and out the door, which spills cold air into the hallway and spits them both out into the snow. Steve has to stop, at the car, lean against it with one palm and breathe. Billy drops his hand, but then Steve feels Billy’s palm against his back, it’s steady, warm, strong. These are not words Steve has used to describe Billy in a long, long time. Not since a beach in California. Not since he was a little kid. He didn’t know to do that, he thinks, and that was his mistake. 

He’s sorry for forgetting. He’s sorry that Billy moved to Hawkins and thought he was alone, but they have _time_ to talk about that, soon. They get in the car and Billy turns it on and as out of it as he feels, Steve makes a note of the way that Billy’s lip curls half into a smile at the sound of the engine.

“Fuck yeah,” he says.

Steve rolls the window down once they get to the main road. He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them. The cold air feels good on his face, but he’s looking at Billy and not out the window. It feels easy, whatever this is, driving away from a concrete bunker, but he’s not stupid. He knows it isn’t easy. He knows it _can’t_ be easy. He doesn’t even really want it to be easy. He just--

He catches Billy’s hand and they turn onto a long stretch of quiet road. Steve squeezes. “Let’s see how fast we can go,” he says.

Very fast, is what it turns out. Billy hugs the curves of the road in a way that makes Steve’s stomach do flips. He lets the car go in a way that makes Steve laugh.

He doesn’t want it to be easy. He knows it’s never going to be. It’s just that he’s starting to think that maybe it doesn’t have to feel so bad, not all the fucking time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all the currently written chapters at once, I'm so sorry I left y'all hanging for so long. There's one more to go that ties things up, but honestly, I think it could also end here. Sending love and gratitude for your patience with my brain in these winter times.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lymricks yelling about stranger things, poetry, and sometimes other stuff, too.


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